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Press Release

Ministers urged to adopt commission's report on 'obscene' boardroom pay

22 November 2011

The government should adopt the recommendations in the High Pay Commission report calling for the curbing of excessive boardroom pay as 'a matter of urgency', Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Tuesday, 22 November).

Unite said that the current pay ratios between the top bosses and the rest of the workforce, highlighted by the report, were 'obscene'.

Unite repeated its demand, which was included in its submission to the commission, that there should be employee representation on the remuneration committees as a mechanism to curb bosses' pay, which is now out of all proportion to average pay of about £25,900-a-year.

Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey said: 'Unite agrees with the report's conclusions that this enormous disparity is corrosive to the economy and we call on ministers to implement the report's 12 recommendations as a matter of urgency.'

'This obscene pay levels enjoyed by the very few at the top also has a wider corrosive effect on society as a whole, widening social and economic inequalities. What is particularly galling is that some of these executives are presiding over organisations that aren't performing well in the first place.'

'Institutional shareholders need to exercise much greater scrutiny and control of directors' pay and bonuses – and if this report's recommendations were implemented, this would greatly assist this process. There needs to be much greater transparency.'

This new report comes after the recent survey by Income Data Services (IDS) that revealed that directors of FTSE 100 companies had received a 49 per cent pay rise in the last year.

At the time, Unite described as the IDS report as 'damning' and showed just how much these 'pampered' directors were removed from the lives of working people.



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