Once of the CBI members John Cridland, said: "This is a difficult and emotive area, and not one that should be rushed. Public sector workers deserve a good retirement, but they and their employers should pay their own way... taxpayers cannot be left to make up the difference."
The CBI of course do not discuss in any way the dramatic increases that company executives have seen in their pay and pensions. There has been little outcry that the bankers, whose failed business model bought the world economy to its knees have continued to feast on billions in bonuses despite the trillion pounds rescue package provided by the UK tax payer. Executives at Britain's top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year, despite the onset of the worst global recession in decades, in which their companies lost almost a third of their value amid a record decline in the FTSE.
A cabal of elite bosses at the helm of multinational corporations are seeing their overall pay packets soar ever higher. The guardian highlighted the feast CBI members have been undergoing while we suffer job and pay cuts http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/executive-pay-keeps-rising the 10 most highly paid executives earned a combined £170m last year – up from £140m in 2007. Five years ago, the top 10 banked some £70m.
The average chief executive of a blue-chip company now earns a basic salary of £791,000. However, adding bonus payments, share awards and the value of perks ranging from cars and drivers to school fees and dental work, the average pay package rises dramatically. Nearly a quarter of FTSE chief executives received total 2008 pay packages in excess of £5m, and 22 directors now have basic salaries of more than £1m.
The FTSE companies are ironically partly owned by the LGPS funds and other public sector pension funds from around the world, its time we used our shareowner power to push back on CBI executive pay! The problems in the economy aren't to do with our pensions they are the result of the failed economic model supported by the CBI.
