Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
TALKING POLITICS Firms exploiting national job retention scheme
A national crisis brings out the best in people.
Just witness all the acts of goodwill carried out by thousands of people volunteering to help the national health service and vulnerable people locked down at home because of coronavirus.
These people are selfless. They represent the best of our country and deserve our respect as well as our gratitude; as do all our paid and unpaid carers.
Unfortunately, times like these also bring out the worst in some people – albeit a small minority.
This happened during both World Wars. When the brave were away fighting for our country, at home there was a small band of cowboys exploiting the situation for their own material benefit.
It is happening again, in the middle of the worst public health crisis the world has ever known. Whilst the good Samaritans help others, a small group of profiteers are helping themselves.
The crisis has also highlighted how we live in a very unequal and unfair country. A report published two weeks ago by the High Pay Centre think tank showed that, as of April 22, at least 44 per cent of the biggest 350 companies in Britain were intending to take up the UK Government’s job retention scheme offer to pay 80 per cent of their staff wages for three months.
This report also showed that the companies already using the scheme have spent a total of £ 321 million on their chief executives’ pay over the past five years. The average pay of these chief executives was a whopping £3.6 million per year.
During the same period, they have also paid out a total of £26 billion in dividends to their shareholders; these companies had made total profits between them over this five-year period of £42 billion.
I am all in favour of the government’s job retention scheme. However, as it is funded entirely by the taxpayer, it is only fair that taxes on the richer sections of society should now be raised to pay for this scheme as well as meet the other huge costs involved in tackling coronavirus.
Whether the UK government adopts such a policy will be a test of whether or not it implements its own propaganda that “We’re all in this together”.
Frankly I am not holding my breath!