By lunchtime today some top UK bosses will have already earned the average UK salary for the entire year.
Earn less than £28,758? Then they beat you to it even earlier.
The figure was calculated by UK think tank the High Pay Centre, and HR management company CIPD, who took into account 12 hour working days and 19 holiday days a year.
‘These shocking inequalities in our society must end,’ tweeted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as the news broke.
His proposal? Spread the wealth more evenly by introducing maximum pay ratios - Corbyn has previously said government contractors should be limited to paying bosses a salary 20 times that of their lowest earners, to make pay fairer.
’The next Labour government will roll out maximum pay ratios, introduce a Real Living Wage of £10/hour and strengthen trade union rights so workers can fight for better pay and conditions.’
If you think this is bad then consider the fact the mean FTSE 100 CEO pay packet actually dropped by a fifth last year – down from £5.4m million to £4.5 million - meaning they used to earn even more in the first three days of the year.
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‘We need a significant re-think on how and why we reward CEOs,’ said Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD in a statement.
‘Taking into account a much more balanced scorecard of success beyond financial outcomes, looking more widely at the impacts of businesses on all stakeholders from employees to society more broadly.'
‘While it was encouraging to see a tiny amount of restraint on pay at the top of some FTSE100 companies last year, there are still grossly excessive and unjustifiable gaps between the top and the rest of the workforce,’ added Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre.
‘Publishing pay ratios will force boards to acknowledge these gaps. We look forward to working with business and government to make this new disclosure requirement work as effectively as possible.’
Of course the CEO of a company should be paid more than someone who has just joined at an entry level position, but these startling stats show we have a real problem with pay inequality.
According to CIPD, overpaying CEOs has a negative impact on the workforce (surprise surprise), 60% of working adults in their 1000-person study said that CEO pay levels demotivate employees, and 54% agreed that CEO pay levels in the UK are bad for an organisation’s reputation.
Thanks to government reforms, 900 companies will have to publish the pay difference between the average employee and the top bosses later this year, and justify the difference.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.