White collar Hunger Games

[bigbadwolf]

Interesting article in yesterday's Guardian on work and pay conditions for retail bank employees in Britain:

There is where it resembles the Hunger Games. What you have at the big banks is large numbers of staff, often on low salaries, whose only shot at getting bonuses, pay rises or keeping their jobs comes down to flogging customers more financial rubbish. Retail banking staff have been coerced into turning predatory – and we are their feedstock.

...

According to Unite, salaries for the lowest grade staff at Lloyds begin at £13,000; the next grade up starts at £17,000; the median salary is now £27,000. Those two bands account for something like 45% of all Lloyds employees. With pay at those levels, you are not just talking about tax credits: 40% of staff in those two bands say they rely on overtime or a second income to make ends meet. Around 12% say they have had to use payday loans in the past year. Another staff member emailed me last week to say that some of her colleagues were using food banks. In 2012, the boss of Lloyds, Antonio Horta-Osorio, took home £3.4m in cash, pension and benefits. Last month, he was lined up for a further £2m bonus in shares. Meanwhile, the people selling you loans have to go to payday lenders; bankers visiting foodbanks. This is a white-collar Hunger Games.

Put yourself in their shoes. Your colleagues are being laid off all around you; your payslip doesn't provide enough to live on. And you believe that pushing financial products is the best way to get more money and keep your job. What would you do?

 

[daleholborow]

Despite the fact that Hunger Games seems to me like a poor man's Battle Royale, I found the figures quoted for average salaries remarkable.