the rich and the poor

Goldman Sachs will divvy up a $12.2bn (£7.9bn) pay and bonus pool among its staff despite a near halving in annual profits. . Even though the investment bank said it had cut its remuneration bill – salaries, bonuses and benefits – by more than a fifth, it still came out to about the size of the GDP of Albania. Based on a headcount of 33,300, which includes some 5,300 staff in the UK, the average remuneration for Goldman employees worked out to $367,057. It is likely that senior bankers will be entitled to bonuses in the millions of dollars.

David Hillman, spokesperson for the UK-based Robin Hood Tax campaign, said: “When even in a bad year each Goldman employee pockets an average of $367,000 – nearly ten times the average UK salary – it’s proof that banks live in a parallel universe to the rest of us.”

Meanwhile

The four largest supermarket chains are paying their staff "poverty" wages while making huge profits and raising executives' salaries, research suggests.

Fair Pay Network (FPN) – a coalition of charities and non-governmental organisations including Oxfam and the Trades Union Congress – says hundreds of thousands of workers at Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons are not paid the "living wage".

The living wage for Londoners – £8.30 – is the hourly rate the Greater London Authority deems necessary to ensure a basic standard of living. It is calculated at £7.20 outside the capital. The GLA has also calculated that a London wage-earner who earns less than about £7.25 an hour will be living in poverty, even after benefits and tax credits are taken into account.

But the FPN's report estimates that supermarket workers are paid an average of £6.83 an hour and only one in seven receives a living wage. Living wage rates are not compulsory, unlike the national minimum wage, which is £4.98 an hour for 18 to 20-year-olds and £6.08 for over-21s.

Meanwhile

The CEOs rake it in Justin King of Sainsbury's, receives £3.2m a year; Philip Clarke of Tesco, £6.9m; Dalton Philips, of Morrisons, £4m; Andy Clarke of Asda's pay is not in the public domain

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/supermarket-staff-live-in-poverty-6291599.html