Do fat cats suffer from depression?

White Dee from Benefits Street is supposedly suffering from depression, but some people argue that she is not.  Meanwhile the chief executive of Somerset County Council has quit her job by mutual agreement.

According to The Daily Mail, Sheila Wheeler was absent from her desk from mid-November up until her recent departure.  So far no clear explanation has been offered for either her absence or her departure, and it appears that legal proceedings make it unlikely that a clear explanation will ever be offered.

It is reported also that her salary was £160,000 per annum, which by my reckoning is close to thirteen times the minimum wage.

The job market is not fair.  If you are unable to read, then you will not be employed as a postman, and clerical work will probably be off limits as well.  If you are tone deaf, then no one will employ you as a musician.  If you are unable to walk, then your employment opportunities are also limited.

And so I come to depression, which is hard to define.  Physical ailments generally have physical symptoms and bio-chemical causes which can be studied and understood.  By contrast, depression is hard to study with any precision.  Indeed it is very hard to be certain that someone is suffering from depression, and certainly a lot of people do not believe that White Dee is depressed.

Of course it is hard to be absolutely certain that someone is illiterate or tone deaf, but people do not tend to use either condition to justify taking time off work.  By contrast it is common for people to use depression and stress as reasons not to work.  Consider this testimony regarding a company founded by Samantha Brick:

Making close to half a million in our first year should have meant profit, but this was wiped out by high salaries and accounting errors by staff. Then, when we began having cash-flow problems, Sarah [the general manager] signed herself off sick with stress for a month. She also confessed she'd been dodging calls from people who were due payment, thus ruining my firm's reputation.

Another thing we do not know is whether or not some people are more susceptible to depression than other people.

 

I repeat that we do not know for certain why Sheila Wheeler was off work for three months, or why she left.  What we do know is that when we add in her payoff equivalent to three months’ salary, she has effectively deprived the council of six months’ salary – and this is a fat cat salary we are talking about.

People who earn fat cat salaries should not be allowed to take time off work suffering from depression except in very restricted cases.  If you are going to pay someone a large salary, then it should be on the basis that they deserve a large salary.  It is only fair that people who are deemed to deserve large salaries should be largely immune to depression.  If we have to suffer the existence of fat cats, then at least they should not also be prima donnas.

As a final point, it is utterly wrong that we are not allowed to know the reason for Sheila Wheeler's departure.  It is common for workplace disputes to be resolved in a way that binds both parties to confidentiality, but that should not apply in the public sector.  We have the right to know what our money is being wasted on.

Related previous posts include:
Fat cats in Cambridgeshire
The way out of Benefits Street