Good coverage in FT, BBC, Guardian for today’s new TUC company finder tool – it’s a neato search that lets you find out company structures and performance for UK companies – things like profits, shareholders, ultimate holding companies and so on. Unsurprisingly though, the angle that’s been picked up on in the media is the more prurient fact you can see top directors’ salaries in all their ample glory.
My favourite bit though is the CBI reaction in the FT’s article:

“Keeping staff well informed about the company’s performance, pay structure and
staff representation is already high on the agenda for firms. In most cases,
however, union members will be entirely unaware of details such as pay, benefits
and length of contract for union executives.”

Heh Heh… This is a “where do you start?” one, but I’ll restrict myself to 2 observations… Namely a lot of unions do make this public – pegging their bosses’ salaries to an equivalent post for their members. But the rather more obvious one is that only a handful of union bosses earn over £100k, which isn’t a particularly high wage for people running such large organisations (the CBI pay more than a little better for one), and as such rather different to the bona fide multi-millionaire fat cattery that most people are wound up about.