The 1998 salaries of the Thomson directors are, I suspect, beyond belief to the vast majority of the group’s 5,000 employees, particularly those making a living on the counters at its travel agency branches.
How can a company justify payments of over ú4m to chief executive Paul Brett, over ú2m to chief operating officer Roger Burnell and over ú1.3m to managing director Richard Bowden-Doyle at a time of cost-cutting and belt tightening?
It is important to point out that the bulk of the money did not come from Thomson itself, but from previous owner Thomson Corporation as a ‘thank you’ for steering the company towards a successful float.
But surely the reward for doing that has been the substantial salaries paid to directors over several years.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any criticism whatsoever of Messrs Brett, Burnell, Bowden-Doyle or any of the other directors at Thomson.
If someone at my company offered me that kind of cash, I’d bite his hand off.
But it is difficult to justify to rank-and-file workers. It would be ludicrous to suggest that the money is somehow redistributed, but I do think that to keep morale high at the market leader, the directors at Thomson need to carry on their good work and also continually look to ways to improve the conditions for their staff.
Jeremy Skidmore – editor