Legislate chief executive salaries

The chief executives of our large companies clearly deserve the sevenfigure salaries they are paid.

It must be true, because a perfectly ordinary cross-section of fellow CEOs say such wages are necessary to get the best people. Well they would, wouldn’t they?

These CEOs are paid large sums mainly by getting the utmost productivity from their employees and suppliers, who are paid somewhat more modestly.

A case in point is Restaurant Brands. The company has made great profits by employing people on the minimum wage.

Rather than curb the excessive pay of the CEOs, we could introduce legislation such that the lowest paid employee would receive not less than (say) 5 per cent of the wages of the big boss.

This might concentrate the minds of the boards who allow these excesses to happen.

Which CEO will reply to this letter to justify why he or she is worth more than 20 of his employees?

And even if they can, they should say why this excellence should be reflected in their income.

In the 1950s, Prof Frederick Herzberg established that once basic ‘‘hygiene factors’’ (which include salary) are met, motivation to do a job is based on quite different issues.

Of course your average sevenfigure CEO will not say ‘‘no’’ to his salary, but how many of them would do the job for considerably less simply because they felt motivated to do so?

Prime ministers must be in this category as they get paid a mere $400,000.

How about a few more CEOs distributing some of their excessive income to those who need it, including their hard-working employees? Ken Maynard Lyttelton