Yahoo Finance UK supermarket bosses paid millions as workers make do with £11 an hour
Supermarket bosses have pocketed millions in pay, in some cases up to 229 times what the average worker takes home, as households face soaring food prices amid a cost of living crisis.
Sainsbury's (SBRY)
Sainsbury’s boss Simon Roberts is at the top of the list, with pay package worth almost £5m despite the supermarket's annual profits taking a hit from rising costs.
The pay deal, revealed in the company’s latest annual report, includes almost £4m in bonuses.
Roberts' total pay package is around 229 times that of the average Sainsbury’s worker, who earns a typical £21,635, according to the annual report.
The supermarket boss received a base salary of £899,000, as well as annual benefits of £17,000 and £67,000 worth of pensions payments.
He also received an annual bonus of £1.7m and long-term incentives worth £2.26m as the supermarket giant invested £225m in colleague pay.
In January, the supermarket chain began paying their shop workers a starting wage of £11 an hour nationwide.
This was up from the £10.25 staff received previously and the London wage went up from £11.30 to £11.95 per hour.
Read more: UK households paying an extra £833 on groceries as food inflation remains high
Morrisons
Morrisons comes in second when it comes to the pay gap, with workers having to work approximately 225 years to make what boss David Potts earned for 2020-21.
Potts earned £4.17m in a year that profits plunged £165m from £435m, which sparked shareholder revolt at the time.
His latest yearly pay is yet to be revealed by the retailer as the annual report isn’t out yet, but assuming there are no big changes, Potts makes approximately 225 times more than a Morrisons worker.
In June last year, Morrisons announced it was to raise the hourly rates for its store and manufacturing staff to £10.20 an hour.
If we assume a 35-hour week, for an entire year, this worker makes an annual base salary of around £18.5k.
For all stores in London, Morrisons pays a London location supplement of £0.85 per hour which takes the minimum rate of pay for staff within M25 to £11.05.
Some workers will make more – like the store manager – but even with staff working more hours at a better pay rate, no one working the floor of the supermarket will come close to the CEO’s millionaire pay.
Tesco (TSCO.L)
Same scenario at Tesco, where boss Ken Murphy took home £4.44m while his workers earned around £22.5k.
Ken Murphy’s total £4.44m package compared with £4.7m a year earlier, after his bonus dipped because of missed targets on profits and food waste. His basic salary rose 1.7% to £1.4m.
Murphy's overall remuneration package was 197 times the total pay and benefits of the median member of staff at Tesco, which was £21,217.
Tesco has recently introduced the third pay rise for staff over the last year.
The supermarket has increased the hourly pay rate for colleagues in stores by 72p, going from £10.30 to £11.02. Staff in stores across the capital are paid a rate of £11.95. The supermarket giant's group pre-tax profits leapt to £2.03bn in the year to 26 February, up from £636m the previous year.
M&S (MKS.L)
Marks & Spencer’s co-chief executives took home more than £2m in pay last year as sales and profits jumped. Stuart Machin earned £2.5m including a £1m bonus and Katie Bickerstaffe earned £2.22m after a £989,000 bonus.
The female co-chief executive of Marks & Spencer effectively earned £250,000 more than her male counterpart as Bickerstaffe only works four days a week.
Read more: Food prices to overtake energy as biggest cost of living headache in the UK
Machin, who works five-day week, received £2.53m, made up of £749,000 in fixed pay and £1.78m in variable pay.
Meanwhile, the average M&S worker took home £24k, with the lowest paid getting £22k. This means Bickerstaffe earned approximately 94 times more than a store worker and Machin made about 105 times more.
“We believe the median pay ratio this year is consistent with pay, reward and progression policies for UK colleagues, as it reflects the consistent approach to pay along with M&S’ policy to pay for performance,” Marks and Spencer said in its annual report.
M&S customer assistants saw their hourly rate increase from £10.20 to £10.90 this April, while those in London saw their pay go from £11.25 to £12.05.
In the year ahead, its chief executives will receive a 3% increase in basic salary, meaning Machin will earn a minimum of £922,000 and Bickerstaffe £811,000 for her four-day week. If they meet performance targets, they could earn £5.7m and £5.2m respectively.
John Lewis (JLH.L)
Retailer John Lewis, which also operates Waitrose, shocked employees when it announced earlier this year that staff would not get a bonus this year.
Read more: UK inflation falls to 8.7% in April but high food prices persist
The bonus is its annual share-out of profits, and all staff receive it as a percentage of their salary. The 2021/22 bonus was worth 3% of employees’ pay.
Sharon White, chairman of John Lewis, said in a letter to staff: “I am sorry that the loss means we won’t be able to share a bonus this year or do as much as we would like on pay.
White got an annual pay packet of £1.15m for 2021-22, though she donated her bonus of £29,700, to the British Red Cross.
“At the end of the reporting period, the chairman’s pay was 49 times the average basic pay of non-management partners calculated on an hourly basis,” the retailer said in its annual report.
John Lewis’ rules limit the pay of the highest paid partner to no more than 75 times the average basic pay of non-management partners.
The John Lewis Partnership is the UK's biggest employee-owned business with around 74,000 staff, known as partners.
Watch: When will food prices start to fall?
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