Shameless bosses who get to hand themselves pay rises

I WONDER what it feels like to be a top executive in the National Health Service (NHS) or the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) and have a skin as thick as a rhinoceros, which enables you to receive obscene pay awards and not show the slightest embarrassment?

I wonder what it feels like to arrive at your place of work knowing your salary has increased by up to 30 per cent but the salaries of your staff have increased by, at most, one per cent? I wonder what it feels like to be immune from the financial hardships most people have had to endure as a result of the recession Britain has faced in the last six years? I wonder what it feels like for your greed to be more important to you than the welfare and friendship of others? I wonder what it feels like to trouser vast sums of money knowing your less fortunate colleagues have had to pay for them?

Top executives at two under-fire NHS trusts, and the Yorkshire Ambulance Service in this region have pocketed pay rises of up to 30 per cent. These rises are said to be “outrageous”, a word which seems totally inadequate to properly describe such obscene awards and clearly demonstrates once again that we are certainly “not all in this together” (The Yorkshire Post, October 4). At a time when the Government has ruled that staff in the public sector must show restraint and have minimal salary increases, just how do these so-called elite executives; yes, public sector executives, manage to by-pass Government policies and help themselves to whopping rises?

Ah! It’s just dawned on me how such increases are justified. A spokeswoman for Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust says the trust’s remuneration committee routinely uses external benchmarking information to provide comparative data to inform its decisions. Now, how could so simple and logical an explanation have escaped my attention? That’s what I call real “gobbledegook”.

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme.

If those at the top of any organisation are allowed to determine or even influence their own remuneration, then you can guarantee that they will first of all look after Number One.

Action should therefore be taken throughout bureaucracy, business and industry to ensure that those salaries are set by others; others who are not susceptible to pressure from 
the top.