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If you're haven't reached the dizzy heights of being a company director, think of your pay rises over the last seven years - then triple them.
According to a new study by the Trades Union Congress, you should then end up with an idea of the sort of pay rises company directors have enjoyed over the same period. Based on a study of 456 company reports, the TUC concluded that basic pay rises for directors outstripped those for their average employees by a factor of three to one.
It’s only when you read the small print on the TUC’s press release that you notice they only looked at the pay of the highest paid directors of each company.
Their median pay rose from £201,000 in 1994 to £416,073 in 2001 – a rise of 107%. The median of average employee pay in the same companies rose from £19,272 to £25,223 over the same period – a rise of just 31%.
Still, it’s a point well made. ‘This isn’t the politics of envy,’ insisted TUC general secretary John Monks as he released the results. Pull the other one.