COMPANY bosses have bagged huge pay rises as workers face continued wage cuts and stagnation, according to research by a leading think tank published today.

A study of annual reports from FTSE100 companies by the High Pay Centre reveals that the average take-home pay for a chief executive jumped by 10 per cent from £4.96 million in 2014 to £5.48 million last year.

The research also shows that, on average, chief executives were paid an astonishing 140 times more than their staff.

Yet in contrast to huge payouts to bosses, only a quarter of FTSE100 companies are accredited as employers paying the living wage, which is currently £9.40 per hour in London and £8.25 per hour in the rest of Britain.

High pay also remains largely male-dominated, with no women in the top 10 highest-paid chief executives of FTSE100 companies.

The study also finds that none of the companies publishes details of the pay ratio between chief executives and other employers, and only one company has an employee representative on the board.

High Pay Centre director Stefan Stern said: “In spite of the occasional flurry from more active shareholders, boards continue to award ever larger amounts of pay to their most senior executives.”

He called for more employee involvement in discussions of executive pay, arguing: “Businesses could save themselves a lot of grief, and do something to restore their reputations, if they listened to workers first before awarding these bumper pay packages.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “While most workers have not had a full recovery in their living standards since the crash, boardroom pay just gets bigger and bigger every year.”

She stressed that it was “an urgent priority to get worker representation on remuneration boards so that we can bring some common sense and fairness to top pay decisions.”

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development chief executive Peter Cheese spoke of “a shocking disconnect between pay for those at the top and the rest of the workforce in large companies.”

He added: “Worse still, this gap is continuing to grow despite our latest data showing that it leads to a real sense of unfairness that has a clear impact on employee motivation.”