Blackstone’s Boss Stephen Schwarzman takes home USD213.5 million, not a bad 33% pay rise in these hard times!

Austerity is not on the minds of the super-rich. The announcement today that this private equity boss’s trough has grown by a third is yet another obscenity that should have us all on the streets and angry as hell. The arrogance, the sense of impunity and the spit in your face attitude of these people must one day be made to come back to haunt them. And the sooner we make that day come through action as well as words like these the better.

Even Henry Ford, one of the founders of modern day capitalism, said that a 40-fold difference between the lowest paid and the highest would do for the rich. With so many of our members on poverty wages which continue to decline in real terms and with this kind of obscene level of pay for the super-rich the crazy notion than someone is worth 40 times someone else looks almost leftist!

This has to stop but only action by people in their millions will stop it. Up off our knees and into the streets has to be part of the labour movement’s call to arms.

We need a “workers spring” and we need it now!