In three days, British bosses earned as much as employees for the whole year

Since Monday, January 6, at 6 p.m., the big bosses of the United Kingdom have earned as much as the average British wage earners for the whole year. It only took three days for this. The chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies, the main stock market index across the Channel, pocketed, in 2018 (the statistics are taken from the 2019 annual reports, which give the remuneration of the previous year), a median remuneration of 3.46 millions of pounds sterling (around 4 million euros). Reported in hourly wages, based on just over three working days since the start of the year, this earned them £ 29,559, the median earnings of Britons working full time. In other words, the big bosses receive 117 times the median salary. In France, according to Proxinvest, CAC 40 managers earn 152 times the average gross salary and 90 times more than the average salary of their employees. At the top of the British charts was Jeff Fairburn, the managing director of Persimmon, a construction company, which pocketed £ 39 million.

The calculation, performed each year by the High Pay Center, a think tank, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a human resources association, nevertheless indicates a slight decline in high wages. In 2018, the big bosses touched 13% less than in 2017, its lowest level since 2010. Difficult however to see a real trend. Over a decade, their median wages have fluctuated between 3.5 and 4 million pounds, which does not really indicate a long-term decline. "The fact that we have to wait until tea time, rather than lunch time, on the third working day for them to earn as much as half of the employees for the whole year puts this slight drop in perspective "quips Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Center.

The “fat cats”

The boom in earnings in the 2000s is far from being corrected. In 1998, the big British bosses earned around 47 times average earnings, a ratio that more than doubled until the 2008 financial crisis and seems to have plateaued.

The stratospheric remuneration of fat cats (literally, "fat cats") testify to the failure of two decades of policy across the Channel forcing high pay transparency. Companies listed in the United Kingdom are now obliged to publish the remuneration of the members of their board of directors. Shareholders now have the right to vote on compensation. This year, companies will also have to publish the ratio between the salary of their boss and that of their employees. But all that has changed nothing. "The level of remuneration that has become the norm cannot be justified"concludes the report.