The man from Del Monte says “YES!”

The US fruit and vegetable producer’s boss Mohammed Abu-Ghazaleh, has been revealed to earn $8.5 million or 1465 times the $5833 median earnings of his 39000 staff (The Week, 31 March 2018). Del Monte is one of the more extreme examples of the new pay ratio disclosures being published by the US Securities and Exchange Commission as an update of the America’s Dodd-Frank reforms. JP Morgan’s boss was paid almost $30 million last year – but at least it was just 364 times what the median JP Morgan employee on $78000 earned (The Week, 31 March 2018).

In the UK, the Equality Trust Pay Tracker can reveal that CEOs in the UK’s top 100 companies now pocket an average of £5.3 million each year or 386 times that of a worker earning the National Living wage. Over two-thirds (67%) of FTSE 100 CEOs are paid more than 100 times the average UK salary. 90% of FTSE 100 CEOs are paid at least 100 times more than the National Living Wage. [equality.trust.org.uk]

Attention has been fixed on gender pay inequality, but now attention is widely on the pay gap between CEOs and their employees. Are people simply paid their worth or is this a wider political issue?