So how will this work in football clubs? Should the groundsman be able to vote against the striker’s (nearly said centre forward, which would show my age) outrageous pay packet? Can the roadies demand a bigger slice of Elton’s royalties?
In the first case, yes, if the club is a quoted company. The latter, no, as rock stars’ businesses are both unquoted and usually offshore. Which is why Mr Branson has wisely stayed well away from the stock market for some years.
Here’s the flip side. Should a business not have the right to choose whom it serves? If you as a client, or more likely potential client, rub us up the wrong way, are a declared anti-vaxxer or support the barges, can we not, as a business, say ‘Be Gone’?
Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently.
Here’s a future problem that will doubtless be kicked down the road until it becomes a crisis. There’s a whole generation who may never be able to afford to buy their own homes.