Katie Allen
Saturday August 5, 2006
The Guardian

Workers smarting from below inflation pay rises can now investigate details of their bosses' bumper pay packets online.
The TUC has today launched a new website giving details of boardroom pay increases in a move which is bound to inflame anger over fat-cat rises. Its "your company" website provides employees in thousands of UK firms with details of directors' pay, pensions and bonuses dug out from companies' annual reports.

"Most employees in the country will now have freedom to get important information about their company with the click of a mouse rather than digging through company reports," said the TUC's assistant general secretary, Kay Carberry. "Company finder also enables job seekers to check out a firm before interviews or accepting a post."

Using the website, workers can look up corporate details such as turnover and a company's pensions commitments. They can discover not only what the boss is paid, but also what the average worker earns, and whether shopfloor rises have kept pace with the executive suite.
A worker at Boots, for example, would be able to see that while profit per employee averages out at £176,299 a year, pay averages out at just £25,393.

The site enables users to check other companies' pay rates for similar jobs and will also calculate how much an employee's salary should have risen by over the past five years in order to have matched pay in the boardroom.

Recent surveys showing top bosses' earnings soaring at more than four times the rate of other workers' pay have sparked outrage among trade unions. Engineer Tomkins stoked the debate in May by announcing it had handed boss Jim Nicol £6.9m last year.

Link.Edited to fix link.

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: blake 3:17 ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
What is TUC?

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http://www.tuc.org.uk/

that is absolutely fantastic. this is the kind of transparency that is serioulsy absent in our labour market here in canada. This kind of info is available, but as the piece above mentions, it is buried in corporate reports and is nearly impossible for the average worker to find.

during bargaining, one of the most common tactics by a company when discussing raises, is to just state matter of factly that the employees of thier company are paid well compared to the going rate in whatever industry or sector they are in. This leaves the bargainers and members (workers) to sift through all the contracts they can find to see if this is true (they are available usually through the labour board), but this is incredibly time consuming and not necessarily easy. Rarely is it the case that when a company makes this bold claim is it true, but they are banking on the fact that it is hard to find out. a central clearing house for this info is great.

I love the comparison to executive compensation. I can't tell you how many times during negotiations the company will cry poor, money is tight because business is down or slow, and unless the company is publicly traded and you can get one of the reports, you are left to request to look at the books, which they will delay as much as possible. Then you happen to read in the business section of the paper that your boss just got a bonus of x dollars for apparently poor performance! (remember they cried poor).

thanks for the link!

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: farnival ]