one rule for the workers , another for the boss class

The TUC attacked bosses for enriching themselves with pension pots averaging £3.5m at a time when staff retirement benefits are being slashed. Its research – analysing the pensions of 329 directors from 102 of Britain's top companies – will also show that the highest-paid directors in each company have pension pots worth an average £5.26m, providing an average annual pension of £298,503. Most bosses (54 per cent) are still in "defined benefit" schemes offering guaranteed sums upon retirement, while the vast majority of staff are stuck with much less generous "defined contribution" arrangements, where the final pension is reliant on investment returns. Even employees who still have access to defined benefit schemes are increasingly finding this is being cut off with companies now acting to close the schemes to future contributions by existing members, having already closed them to new staff. The survey further found that directors enjoy significantly higher contributions to their pensions than members of staff and frequently have the option of either cash payments or payments into personal pension schemes.

The TUC report highlights the huge gap between the average director's pension and the average employee pension, based on Government figures. Directors can now expect to enjoy incomes of 26 times the average occupational pension of £8,736 which is higher than the pre-recession pension gap.

The TUC case is backed by the National Association of Pension Funds, the biggest workplace pension body which will raise concerns that directors pension arrangements are not linked to performance, by contrast to other parts of their remuneration packages. This raises the spectre of directors reaping substantial rewards for failure. Their generous pension entitlements appear to allow them to run a company into the ground before retiring in luxury.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Employers often tell us that decent staff pension schemes are no longer affordable. Directors' representatives are in the vanguard of those attacking public sector pensions. Yet greed is still good in the nation's top boardrooms where directors continue to reward themselves with seven figure pension pots."