Top British executives earn as much in three days as average worker in one year: survey

LONDON, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- The top executives of the leading British companies earn 120 times as much as their workers get paid on average, according to new research released on Thursday.

The survey called "Fat Cat Thursday" from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), a London-based professional body and the High Pay Center, a British think-tank, showed that the average boss of the 100 top British companies had earned more than the average annual wage by the third working day in the year, in this case Thursday.

For every pound that the average worker earned, the average top executive earned 120 pounds, according to Charles Cotton, performance adviser for the CIPD.

"There needs to be more oversight. How is profit and turnover achieved, what about the people -- employee turnover, pay and engagement," Cotton told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

"While financial measures may look healthy but if they are gained by exploitative measures that will come back to haunt the organization and it may see performance dip."

"If shareholders are aware of that they could then focus on the whole of the organization rather than the person at the top."

While the disparity between top executives and workers had lessened a little in Britain over the past year it was still above that of comparable European economies.

"The difference in Belgium, Sweden or the Netherlands is a lot smaller," said Cotton.

The survey result drew criticism from trades unions.

Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O'Grady criticized the pay disparity.

She said: "Workers are suffering the longest pay squeeze since Napoleonic times. But some bosses are still getting salaries that look like telephone numbers.

"Workers should be given seats on pay committees to bring some common sense and fairness to boardroom pay."

Tim Roache, general secretary of one of GMB union, one of the largest in the country, said: "It's simply obscene that in just three working days, top company bosses will have made more money than the typical full-time worker will earn in the entire year."

"Big corporations are not going to volunteer to really rein themselves in, which is why we need greater restraint on the excesses of those at the top." Enditem