PLAID Cymru Assembly Members have accused the Labour-led Welsh government of supporting the huge salaries of council chief executives.
The chief executive of Wales’s biggest local authority, Cardiff Council’s Jon House, currently earns almost £184,000, which is £50,000 more than First Minister Carwyn Jones.
In March, Caerphilly council suspended its chief executive when an investigation was launched into the way he was awarded a controversial pay rise of £25,400.
One Plaid Cymru AM, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, said the wages of council chiefs were now ‘totally out of control’.
But ministers resisted calls from opposition AMs to put an independent panel in charge of senior officers’ pay, saying salaries were a local matter and it would be wrong for the government to intervene.
Thomas, who tabled the amendment to the Local Democracy Bill, said: ‘It’s out of control totally.
‘As we’ve seen recently in the press coverage, there are numerous chief executives, senior management, earning far more than the first minister here, far more than the prime minister in the UK.’
A Welsh government spokeswoman said: ‘Local authority pay is a matter for each authority and its members are accountable to their local electorates for the decisions they take. . .
‘For these reasons, we feel that it would not be appropriate for the pay of senior staff within authorities to be set at a national level.’
Meanwhile, the rest of the population are struggling.
More than 26,000 workers in the UK who were paid less than the national minimum wage of £6.19 an hour for workers aged 21, have received £4m between them after investigations by HM Revenue & Customs, figures show.
HMRC said 708 employers had been fined with charges of up to £5,000, after it reviewed 1,693 complaints in 2012-13.
Affected workers were given an average of £300 in back-pay, it said.
Cases investigated by HMRC included the illegal use of interns, unpaid extra hours and workers forced to buy company clothes as uniform.
In one instance, a major fashion chain was ordered to pay its 90 unpaid interns almost £60,000, HMRC said.
Another company, described as a ‘national retailer’, was forced to pay more than £193,000 to 3,500 staff for requiring them to attend work before and after opening hours without pay.
