Let's be clear what we are talking about: by far the largest part of this cash pile is paid out to a small number of bosses and managers at the top of our biggest companies. In banking, the rewards are spread around a bit more, but they barely touch the vast majority of employees in branches and behind computers.So? That's a matter for them and their shareholders. No-one else.
And it is worth asking what these cash payments are for. A bonus in most people's minds should be paid for doing something exceptional, something that is beyond the call of duty and comes on top of the day job. However, for many top earners, bonuses have become too easy to achieve and are almost taken for granted as part of the salary.And again, it's none of your business. If the management and shareholders want to award bonuses, it's up to them. Don't like the idea? Work somewhere else!
Big pay ratios within companies have been shown to affect motivation and employee morale. More than that, it is quite obscene for bosses to continue to award themselves big pay-outs when company performance is mediocre, share prices have gone nowhere and staff are being cut (or agreeing pay cuts to preserve jobs).And in a free world, you are free to seek other employment if you disagree with the way a company is run. Most people don't care, they are more concerned with doing their job and then going home to their families.
They gave up student politics when they grew up...
Inequality is holding back economic recovery. It is not surprising there is little demand in the economy when many are struggling to make ends meet. At the same time, trust in the business sector is plumbing record lows. Business leaders are even looking to the church to help them restore their moral compasses. Part of the answer is in their own pay packets. It is time to get away from the idea that executive pay is some kind of jackpot that bosses have to hit. What is wrong with working for a salary like everyone else?Nothing. Why son't you try selling your ideas to the senior civil service, and the BBC? I'm sure they'll be receptive...
The High Pay Centre has called for widespread simplification to these complex packages which are hard for everyone – including those on the receiving end – to understand. Performance-related pay should be kept to a minimum and even then paid in shares that have to be held beyond retirement.WTF?!?
It is time for a broader debate in Britain about what is fair pay at the top and across the workforce.I’ll keep it simple for you – fair pay is what ever a company and it’s shareholders decide to pay out for the job.
20 comments:
Fair is what the boss says?
Strange definition of fairness, paticularly when it concerns an industry that is propped up with taxpayers money and operates as a cartel.
Yep!
Yep...Agree.
Agree with Noggin....in part. The banks weren't always propped up with taxpayers money. It's a relatively new thing and they are paying it back.
I can see both sides here and a balance should be struck with those at the top foregoing bonuses until every penny is paid back with interest. For some strange reason the majority of the general taxpaying public are quite happy to keep using banks while moaning about them. Such is "choice".
Anyhoo...once that's done they can pay themselves whatever the hell they like as far as I'm concerned and people can vote with their feet if it bothers them so much.
As for journalists perpetuating chronic envy and guilt...they'll just focus elsewhere and it'll be back to castigating the rest of us for being able to afford to clothe our naked bodies whilst south africans are forced to spend their lives in the nuddy.
Deborah Hargreaves is evidently a brainless little girl (trapped in an old woman) who wants a pony because some girl from school has one.
I am a drone. I am paid well and get a desultory (these days) bonus for helping the guys upstairs get their rock star payouts. I get a pony, they get Frankel.
Were it not for them, I'd have to do what Deborah Hargreaves does - write tripe for little reward. No pony for me!
And no pony for you, Deborah, until you get off your ass (ob equine reference) and work for it.
Why can't some people get it through their heads that they are better off than others, who are better off than others and so on, and some people are better off than us, and others are better off than they are and and and?
This numbskull hag doesn't realise that I do not resent the guys upstairs any more than I'd expect the friendly Spanish cleaner to resent me. And should the person working at Pret resent the cleaner? Should the Big Issue vendor resent the Pret worker?
If Deborah Hargreaves is such an expert on business, let her set her own concern up. Let us see how well her salesmen do with no commission, her sales managers with no target boosters. And let her take on all the risk, with her own, real money, for a salary.
Come on sweetcheeks, we're all waiting...
The problem with your argument, Julia, is that small shareholders do not have much of a voice and large institutional shareholders are fellow-travellers on the gravy train.
Pay it back ?
The money "given" them was never loaned. The transaction involved the treasury BUYING BACK government bonds that the banks had purchased, plus interest, before time.
All they will do is purchase the bonds again....and they did not loan the money out anyway....and they claimed/are still claiming, tax relief on their losses.
Ask the shareholders ?
Since the majority of shareholdings are by large institutions, which also pay their successful/unsuccessful executives large bonuses, you can expect a lack of interest....which you get, bye-and-large....but recently some shareholders are getting rather sickened by chief execs being awarded millions for losing money and making rotten decisions....more of that please, I fail to see why a person should get a large salary, and share-options (taxed at 10%) AND an obscene bonus for running a company that records large losses....FOR UK TAX PURPOSES......while also having large amounts of "branches" registered in south-seas islands which make massive profits with nobody working for them...
JohnR
Another point worth noting is that it is impossible to operate in a modern world without a bank account, hence the banks have a captive audience and give not a fig if customers leave for the 'competition' as they themselves will in turn accept that 'competition's'. customers in stead.
The same is so with insurance companies. Once it becomes a legal obligation to have insurance then the insurance companies have a blank cheque. Just look at the VAST profits these companies make to see if competition has sharpened their price. Ever.
No, sorry, they cannot have it both ways; if they are private, then they cannot have a penny of taxpayer cash. Cock it up through casino style investing? Sorry, assets sold, directors in clink, business bust.
To encourage the others.
XX Don't like the idea? Work somewhere else!XX
Aye. Cuba springs immediately to mind.
Damn commy turdbags.
Bunny
Haven't we gone off message here onto the banking crisis, this bloody woman is talking about business per se, not just about banking, actually if at all about banking. Bloody idiots like her keep the poor, poor and can do sod all about the rich. Its like the Labour Party going on about Dave's banker mates, well who was it who bailed the buggers out in the first place. Disingenuous scum.
If it is indeed the case that exceptional rewards should only be paid for exceptional performance, then perhaps Ms Hargreaves should be questioning the basis of Alan Rusbridger's £800k+ salary.
I mean, the paper is losing £40m a year and that payout is more than five times what we pay the Prime Minister.
Large bonuses should not be a problem when payments can be justified. That a growing number are completely unmerited, creates widespread envy; an unsettled and unfair society.
There is an income threshold when a bonus assumes more symbolism than monetary incentive. It should not be forgotten that among the high-salaried, there are some moral folk setting such high standards for themselves, they are known to waive further rewards.
Inequality is holding back economic recovery.
Right, shall we start listing the actual reasons?
James,
Massive over-taxation; over-regulation; corruption at all levels of government, local and national; ineptitude and incompetence rewarded with huge swathes of taxpayer cash; utility, banking, telecoms and insurance cartels; over-population; mass-immigration; globalisation; Liberal insanity.
That cover it?
"...an industry that is propped up with taxpayers money and operates as a cartel."
Me, I'd have let them go to the wall. But we are where we are, and if Labour didn't put strings on that public money, well, that's their fault.
"This numbskull hag doesn't realise that I do not resent the guys upstairs any more than I'd expect the friendly Spanish cleaner to resent me."
Spot on!
"If it is indeed the case that exceptional rewards should only be paid for exceptional performance, then perhaps Ms Hargreaves should be questioning the basis of Alan Rusbridger's £800k+ salary.
"
*chuckle*
wen i askd iff i got a boneus the super sed it wos a keeping you on boneus an i cant weight
Fuck me! I agree with the Nogster and MTG...completely! Fuck!
Melvin T Pussface, you can't help yourself can you.
Ivor,
You can't be wrong all the time ;-)
"You can't be wrong all the time"
Ivor was TeaBoy at the Met office but never got the hang of forecasting breaks for a cuppa.
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