Putting workers on the board is a bitter but necessary pill | Nils Pratley

The IPPR's proposal will not be popular among directors, but the idea is sound

Many of the arguments in the IPPR's prosperity and economic justice report would probably raise a cheer or two in big British boardrooms. Not every director is a wild advocate for the shareholder-first version of capitalism that the report diagnoses as a major failing in the UK economy. Far-sighted business folk happily concede that short-term horizons can lead unhappily to under-investment and the pursuit of impossible targets.

It's just that, when it comes to one specific recommendation in the IPPR's report, one can hear the howls of outrage already. The idea that large companies of more than 250 employees should have at least two elected workers on both their main board and their remuneration committee will be damned as unworkable, naive and a certain route to making companies uncompetitive.