Students' estimates of the annual remuneration of a non-FCM specialist were on average 44% greater than that of a practitioner of FCM (table 1), a value that falls within the range of specialist general practitioner remuneration ratios of other OECD countries.
Other proposals from the High Pay Centre include worker representation on company boards, remuneration committees, a maximum pay ratio and a legally binding target for the reduction of inequality.
The High Pay Commission, which reported yesterday, suggested putting employees on remuneration committees, publishing the top 10 executive pay packages and forcing companies to reveal the pay ratio between the highest paid executive and the company median.
UK companies are also subject to a variation of the CEO pay ratio rule, requiring the disclosure of the boss's remuneration compared with employees.
"My test for him on executive pay is whether he would do what Labour would do if we were in office now: put an employee representative on every remuneration committee, make firms publish their pay ratios, empower pension companies and investors, and have another year of the bank bonus tax to get some of our young people back to work.
We need greater transparency, detailed pay ratios and employees on those cosy remuneration committees, says the HPC.
I believe this has to change and that government can help by making remuneration report votes compulsory, and including a requirement to report earnings ratios across the business – allowing shareholders to see the scale of the inequality of rewards between the few and the many.
Some argue that US pay ratios are more like 70 to one when only cash remuneration is taken into account.
This finding suggests that particular attention should be devoted to the productivity to wage cost ratio of low-educated women but also to policies favouring gender equality in terms of remuneration and career advancement.
Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre, said the increases showed there was a case for revisiting the "powerful" idea of forcing firms to publish the ratio between executive remuneration and pay on the factory floor.
