FTSE fat cats now earn 180 times the average worker's wage, as their salaries hit £4.7m a year

SOURCE DAILY MAIL: FTSE fat cats now earn 180 times the average worker, as their salaries hit £4.7m a year

The gap between bosses and workers has soared over the past 20 years - from just 60 times the average wage in the 1990s. On average the bosses of Britain's 100 biggest companies took home £4.7million last year - up from £4.1million the year before, according to the High Pay Centre. Ordinary workers, meanwhile, earned £26,884. A Business Department spokesman said: 'The Government has introduced comprehensive reforms to give shareholders more powers in order to restore the link between top pay and performance, which in recent years has become excessive and increasingly disconnected.” But the High Pay Centre said shareholders were still signing off soaring executive pay despite being given the power to vote them down at annual meetings. They urged the government to take 'radical action' to close the gap, such as requiring firms to cap executive pay at a fixed multiple of their lowest paid employees. High Pay Centre director Deborah Hargreaves said: 'The Government's tinkering won't bring about a proper change in the UK's pay culture... We need to build an economy where people are paid fair and sensible amounts of money for the work that they do and the incomes of the super-rich aren't racing away from everybody else... A maximum pay ratio would recognise the important principle that all workers should share in a company's success and that gaps between those at the top and low and middle earners cannot just get wider and wider.'

SOURCE HIGH PAY CENTRE: How to make top pay fairer

The Government should consider requiring companies to cap executive pay at a fixed multiple of their lowest-paid employee, according to a new report published today by the High Pay Centre think-tank. The report notes that since the late 1990s executive pay has grown from 60 times that of the average UK worker to nearly 180 times and that more radical action is needed if the gap between top bosses and everyone else is to return to more proportionate levels. Last year the Coalition Government gave shareholders the power to vote down executive pay policy at company AGMs if they thought the proposed pay package was too large. However, every vote at a FTSE 100 company has seen a majority of shareholders support the company policy on top pay. In 2013, pay received by the average FTSE 100 Chief Executive increased to £4.7 million, up from £4.1 million in 2012. The High Pay Centre argue that the perception of an executive elite reaping all the rewards from economic growth is damaging trust in business, while the threat of widening inequality could also cause political and economic instability. Polling suggests that 78% of the public would support a maximum limit on the amount the highest-paid employee of a company can be paid in relation to the lowest-paid, with just 13% opposed.

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