THOSE whom former GMB leader John Edmonds famously once referred to as “greedy bastards” are still with us, except that they are greedier than ever.

According to the High Pay Centre, the average income of Britain’s top 100 chief executives is 143 times bigger than the average wage in the company they lead. 

This differential is three times greater than in 1998, which even then was a grotesquely unequal 47. 

As many of the 100 largest companies quoted on the London stock exchange are transnational corporations, the High Pay Centre’s calculations reflect the low wages paid in super-exploited Third World countries.

In the case of one gold-mining corporation which operates mostly in Africa, the CEO received more than £4 million in salary, bonus “incentives” and pension contributions last year while his workers subsist on a wage of £3,000. 

Their “incentive” is, presumably, to keep themselves and their loved ones alive.

However, even when it comes to companies whose workforce is based largely in Britain and other developed capitalist economies, the differentials are mind-boggling. 

For example, the boss of Associated British Foods which includes Primark gobbled up £5.3m in 2013, while his average employee had to make do with 361 times less on £14,558. 

The CEO at Whitbread scooped £6.4m, 415 times more than his average employee.

This all makes a mockery of the hand-wringing of Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne and Business Secretary Vince Cable about the need for boardroom restraint and their reforms to boost “shareholder power.”

The corporate porkers continue to sit on each other’s remuneration committees, award each other troughfuls of “remuneration” and then vote to endorse them at corporate AGMs.

Meanwhile, in terms of purchasing power, the real wages of workers in Britain have fallen by more than 2 per cent since the start of 2008. 

Together with deep public spending cuts, this has been a major reason why our economic recovery has lagged behind those in other developed countries. 

Now we are relying on “quantitative easing” cash transfusions for the banks, “trickle-down” tax cuts for the rich and big business, government-subsidised house price inflation and revived personal borrowing to maintain it.

Recent experience highlights the dangers of such an approach. 

A more solid recovery would be based on expanded investment in productive industry and public services, a massive house-building programme, selective price controls, limits on the export of capital, higher taxes on top incomes and corporate profits and a real rise in people’s incomes of every kind.

Extensive public ownership in the energy, transport and banking sectors would help ensure that investment, production, employment and sustainability priorities prevail over corporate greed.

As part of the struggle for such an alternative economic strategy, the labour movement should gear up this autumn for a massive wages offensive in 2015. 

By embracing both the private and public sectors and the demands for equal pay audits and a substantial increase in the statutory minimum wage, the unions would show all workers why they need trade unionism and unity. 

Let the “greedy bastards” tremble when the first shots are fired on October 18, at the Britain Needs a Pay Rise demonstration called by the TUC.