Rewards too high for our ‘talented’ executives

When is an employee not just an employee?

When is a manager or a director not just a manager or a director? Apparently that answer is when that individual is described as the “talent”.

It’s an expression we’ve been hearing more and more recently as sundry bodies and individuals seek to make themselves worth more than normal individuals; because they are worth it, of course. In the old days the expression “talent” used to be a description used in the entertainment business. Now it’s used willy-nilly to justify ridiculous salaries, followed by insane bonuses and expenses and followed by extortionate pensions.

The dictionary describes talent as being a special natural ability or aptitude, or as the capacity for the achievement of success. In even older days a talent was a unit of measure, as in “a talent of gold or silver”.

Apparently today it’s like a lot of other words that can mean anything to anybody. However, it’s particularly used in business circles when a need appears to justify pay levels that look like telephone numbers.

On the basis of the considerable remuneration levels we in Ireland must have lots of talent. After all, our taoiseach, his ministers and politicians in general are paid considerably more than their opposite numbers in far larger, more complicated and much more successful economies.

Unfortunately, it does not just stop there. Our senior public servants and the heads of semi-states and quangos are better remunerated than their colleagues in Europe. Similarly, our judiciary is better remunerated. Our union leaders and those of other representativebodies such as the medical organisations and also, apparently, the Law Society are handsomely rewarded for their so-called talent. Indeed, the list of those better off than their direct external comparators is endless. That is, of course, until you go to the lowest ranks of the public sector and there we see that the salary levels are that much more comparable.

This week we read a report that the new chairman of Greencore had defended the high executive pay levels because the business has to compete with its peers to retain top talent. On the same day it was announced that the new head of Irish Water would receive a salary of €200,000. Given that this new appointee will report to the soon-to-be-appointed new chief executive of Board Gáis, and given the typical remuneration differentials between a number one and a number two, it’s hard to see how government will be able to keep the BGE CEO’s remuneration within the limits of a max of €250,000. That is, if we want to get the best talent.

Well if remuneration levels are the measure we, in Ireland, have had lots of talent over the last decade. Unfortunately for the rest of us it’s hard to see, with a few notable and honourable exceptions, what natural ability these folk had and have, given the disaster that has been, and continues to be, made of this economy. Clearly in most cases the only aptitude has been one of making themselves ever richer and ever more immune from paying any price for their own failures. The rest of us get to pay for it.

Last week the CEO of Goldman Sachs was interviewed on Hardtalk, a BBC programme. It was absolutely nauseating to listen to him arrogantly justify the fact that his remuneration had increased by $20m (€14.75m) last year. If my memory does not let me down Goldman Sachs had a role in the world economic collapse and its policies contributed to the Greece’s economic problems.

The so-called talent which operates in the commercial sphere just seem to live on

Nobody is worthy of these ridiculous remuneration levels which are now tens, and sometimes hundreds, of multiples of what the rest of folk are getting paid. It’s obscene to put it mildly.

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