Of all the challenges that bosses of big businesses face every day, justifying their own pay packet must be among the most difficult.
Thankfully for them, they do not have to justify it, other than throwing a non-binding question to investors every year at the annual meeting.
It seems absurd that with the 2008 financial crash painfully fresh in the mind, and the average worker is being squeezed again because of the economic uncertainty following the Brexit vote, the chief executives of Scotland’s listed trading companies earn on average 24 times the median Scottish salary.
Like a private jet flying above the storm clouds, these bosses were paid £35 million last year, with half taking home six-figure bonuses.
While eight on the list earned less than £200,000, Ross McEwan, the chief executive of RBS, which remains 73 per cent owned by the tax payer, was paid £3.5m in a year when the bank lost £7bn.
Consider that the average Scottish worker would have to toil for more than a century and half to earn what Mr McEwan did last year.
And that many of those earning below the average salary will find themselves both in work and in poverty.
It is in this environment of increasing inequality that the UK government’s measures to increase accountability are a step forward, but forcing companies to publish ratios between the boardroom and the shop floor is toothless, nothing more than an attempt to shame companies into reigning in pay levels at the top.
While this may be window dressing, it will at least provide more transparency than exists at the moment.
What is more interesting is that companies will now have to justify the scale of that ratio.
Ministers have not published any information on what will happen if the Investment Association, which will oversee the new laws, believes the ratio cannot be justified, but it begins to hold bosses to account.
The justification will likely be that bosses are simply being paid ‘market rate’, the same argument that has justified the outrageous bonuses paid to City traders.
Perhaps the answer is not just to consider paying bosses less, perhaps the solution to maintaining an acceptable ratio is to pay the average worker more.
After all, if more people were paid more money, it would be circulated in the economy and not hoarded by the few.
That would accelerate economic growth and those storm clouds would perhaps part and give everyone a bit of sunshine.
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