Sainsbury’s boss’s pay triples to £3.8m as firm rejects living wage calls

theguardian.com:

Sainsbury’s has revealed that its chief executive, Simon Roberts, received pay worth £3.8m in the latest financial year even as it rejected calls from big investors for it to pay all workers a living wage.

Roberts’s total pay nearly tripled for the year to March from the £1.3m he received in 2021, when he waived his bonus in light of the coronavirus pandemic, according to figures published in the supermarket’s annual report on Monday.

Sainsbury’s said the £3.8m pay packet – 183 times larger than the median worker at the supermarket– represented a like-for-like increase of 31% over the year. That compared with 5.3% pay increases for the staff it directly employs in stores, well below the 9% rate of inflation that is causing a cost of living crisis.

Britain’s second-largest supermarket pays the living wage to its 171,000 direct employees across more than 1,400 stores in the UK, but crucially, it has declined to make its contractors pay the living wage of at least £9.90 an hour outside London or £11.05 in the capital. Outsourcing companies such as Mitie provide essential services such as cleaning and security to the supermarket.

However, Sainsbury’s is facing a vote on 7 July brought by shareholders who are pushing for it to set pay in line with levels set by the Living Wage Foundation, a charity. Leading City investors including HSBC, Legal & General Investment Management and Fidelity International are part of the coalition calling for the living wage.

It will be the first living wage shareholder resolution to be filed at a UK company, amid scrutiny of supermarkets, which are among Britain’s largest employers. More than half of the FTSE 100 are among more than 10,000 accredited living wage employers, but none of the big