Now PM bids to give staff a say on fat cats’ pay

May’s horror that the top CEOs earn £4.3m a year

THERESA MAY will this week step up her attack on ‘fat cat’ bosses by paving the way for workers to be given a direct say in levels of executive pay.

The Prime Minister has been horrified by figures showing that the typical pay for the CEO of a FTSE100 company has increased more than four-fold since 1998, rising from £1 million then to £4.3 million last year – and has grown at a rate more than five times that of the average pay packet.

Now, under proposals being published this week, employees would be allowed to appoint a representative who would sit in on top-level discussions about bosses’ pay – and could object to huge rewards.

The move is a key plank in Mrs May’s mission to show that she is on the side of the so-called JAMs, the families who are ‘just about managing’ to survive on their incomes.

It also helps to distract attention from dire warnings by economists that low-income workers face a ten- year squeeze on pay as a result of the economic shock of Brexit.

Chancellor Philip Hammond – whose personal net worth has been estimated at more than £8million thanks to his interests in property development – is understood to have reservations about Mrs May’s crusade, arguing privately that the Government should adopt a more ‘hands-off’ approach to big business.

Under the plans, contained in a Green Paper on corporate governance, companies would also have to reveal the size of the pay gulf between the chief executive and the firm’s average worker, while shareholders could be given a binding vote on the size of individual pay packages. Shareholders can currently only vote every three years on the overall level of compensation packages, not on the specific details of bosses’ pay.

Mrs May announced last week that she was rowing back on plans to force firms to put workers on their boards in the face of protests from business leaders. But the Green Paper will propose that employee representatives should be given an advisory role on company remuneration committees ‘to bring challenge to pay debates’ and help the committees to ‘gauge any potential negative impacts on the wider workforce from disproportionately high levels of remuneration for a small number of top executives’.

Top company bosses take home a salary which is now 129 times higher than that of their average employee.

The move follows outrage over the levels of compensation for figures such as the controversial former BHS tycoon Sir Philip Green.

Last night, a Government source said that the measures were designed to ensure there was ‘public trust’ in British business.