Pay contrasts stir bitter revolt

By KATHERINE GRIFFITHS

They are both resigned to losing their jobs at Corus, the troubled steel giant which announced 1150 redundancies this week. Both have spent much of their working lives at the former British Steel.

When Sir Brian Moffat, 64, steps down as chairman this month, he will face the most comfortable of futures, with a yearly pension estimated at £300,000 ($859,212).

He has been chairman for four years, and, in that time, has presided over one of Britain's most serious corporate failures.

Roger Moore, a £24,000-a-year grinder, faces a less prosperous retirement. He is 54, and believes it unlikely he will work again.

When he is made redundant from Corus' Stocksbridge plant after 17 years' service, he will receive a one-off payment of about £18,000. He has no idea what his pension will be, but it will be scant.

Moore feels he is paying for the mistakes of Moffat and Tony Pedder, the chief executive who departed last month.

Pedder's reward for overseeing the company as it lurched into financial crisis was a £550,000 golden handshake. He took with him a pension pot of £2.3 million.

Moore said: "Around us the fat cats still earn massive amounts of money. We are all angry that they thrive while we have pay freezes and see friends being made redundant."

As workers at Stocksbridge, near Sheffield, heard that the plant was to close, shareholders were reacting furiously to the executive payments at the company's annual meeting in London.

Shareholders' revolts over directors' remuneration is a dominant theme after a change in the law this year has meant companies must now put executive pay to the vote.

This week Corus had to try to justify a series of generous payments to its board, which included nearly £600,000 in salary and pension for Moffat last year.

The task was made harder when the company, which has already made 12,000 people redundant since 1999, including 10,000 in Britain, announced the 1150 job cuts.

It signalled that 2200 more jobs were at risk. Moffat said: "We don't easily put people out of work. But we have got two or three years to try to help those people who have been identified."

That had little impact on the hundreds of protesting shareholders and Corus employees.

"I have never seen a worse board," shareholder Kishin Navani told employees. "I take pity on you."

Another shareholder, Anthony Williams, demanded to know how the company, which is desperately trying to find assets to sell to raise cash, could afford the red stage its directors were sitting on.

"You are a board in a warm rosy glow. I would have expected you, gentlemen, to be sitting on benches, hanging your heads in shame and wearing sackcloth and ashes."

Corus has not paid bonuses to its directors for the past three years. Only David Lloyd, its finance director, had a rise in basic pay last year.

The company was nonetheless confronted with a demonstration by nearly 100 members of ISTC, the steel workers' union, outside the meeting to protest about what many of its members feel are generous payments for failure by executives.

Inside, Corus worker Rob Middlemas said: "I am a trade unionist and we have been doing our damnedest to keep the troops motivated. But how can you expect us to keep motivating the troops when you keep chopping off heads?"

Corus is one of a long list of companies that have clashed with their shareholders in recent weeks as investors have used for the first time their right to vote on company reports on directors' pay.

Reuters, Granada and Shell felt the heat at their shareholder meetings for the large payouts for senior executives when the businesses were struggling.

- INDEPENDENT