Study: Pay inequality widening in UK

A new research says the pay packets of the UK’s top 350 company boardrooms shows 52 executives were paid at least 100 percent more than last year.

 The research conducted by the Labour Research Department shows how pay inequality is widening at a staggering rate in the country.

According to the research, 535 executives earn over £1 million a year with an annual movement from lower to middle bands as remuneration increased. It shows an average 8.1 percent rise on last year.

The widening gap between average wages comes despite the Conservative government’s mantra that “we’re all in this together.”

The highest paid was Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising and PR group WPP, whose latest £43m remuneration package included £274,000 worth of flights paid for so that his wife could accompany him on business trips, plus £50,000 he is reckoned to save the company on hotel bills by staying in his New York flat and other homes during business trips.

The Labour Research Department is a trade-union-backed think-tank not connected to the Labour Party.

“There is a fundamental misunderstanding in the mainstream economics as they don’t understand that the capital and the controls on the capital are taking an increasing share of the productive output and this means that those who are in control of it are able to increase their proportionately takeout pay,” told Press TV a London-based analyst Rodney Shakespeare.

Shakespeare said the only way out of the current crisis is to turn to what he called the democratic economy which means to take advantage of the productive capacity of the ordinary people.