Top bosses are paid 100 times more than the average worker

The bosses of Britain's largest companies are being paid more than 100 times as much as the average worker, it was revealed yesterday.

It means top executives now collect more than twice as much in a week as most people do in a year.

Last year, the bosses of companies in the FTSE-100 index awarded themselves rises averaging 16 per cent - five times the average 3.5 per cent given to their employees over the same period.

The study, by pay analysts Incomes Data Services, provoked outrage among politicians and trade union leaders who called the pay gap grotesque.

The figures showed that, since Labour came to power promising greater fairness, bonuses for chief executives have more than doubled while most workers have received far more modest rises.

Many families on ordinary salaries now have difficulty meeting soaring household and council tax bills.

Liberal Democrat acting leader Vince Cable said last night: "This is yet further evidence that Britain has become more of an unequal society under Labour."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Top directors clearly have no shame. Year in, year out they have been paying themselves far bigger rises than they are prepared to pay their staff, while lecturing us on the need for low taxes."

Mr Barber said it was hard to believe that chief executives were working twice as hard as five years ago. The pay gap between the boardroom and other workers is the biggest since records were first kept seven years ago.

In 2000, a typical FTSE-100 chief executive was paid 39 times the national average. Today's figure is 109 times.

The change cannot be attributed to performance and company profits either, as the FTSE-100 share index, which values the firms, was higher in 2000 and 2001 than it is today.

Mr Cable said: "Companies have too much control over what their top people get paid and shareholders have too little. There are many cases when chief executives earn massive bonuses for mediocre performance or even failure."

Steve Tatton, the author of the IDS report, said experts were now questioning the level of chief executives' bonuses, adding: "What passed for maximum performance five years ago now passes for on-target levels of achievement."

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The figures showed that top salaries averaged £737,000 last year, but executives raked in millions more with bonuses and share options. The average FTSE chief executive received a total of £3,174,000.

These 'extras' have soared massively in recent years. In 2000, bonuses roughly equalled 50 per cent of salary.

Now they are the same or even higher, and there are often other perks such as share options.

Mr Barber said: "This is not just morally-offensive greed, it is bad for the rest of society.

"The growth of the super-rich, semi-detached from the rest of society, hits social cohesion, feeds into house price inflation and harms staff loyalty and commitment.

"It is time the rest of us gave a big raspberry to all their handwringing excuses such as needing the incentives to match the international 'going rate'."

Disgraced former BP boss Lord Browne, who resigned from the oil giant earlier this year after he lied to a court about his gay lover, was paid £10.6million in 2006-7.

This year would have been even higher had he not been forced to give up a portion of his bonus for embarrassing BP.

Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy enjoyed a pay package of £6.8million last year, while his shelf-stackers earned £11,100 and grocery managers £18,500.

As well as chief executives, other FTSE-100 directors are also coining it.

The average top finance director earned £1.6million last year and chairmen and heads of company divisions around £1.7million.