“Who are you serving? » On Wednesday January 25, on the eve of the parliamentary debate on the pension reform, Gérard Mardiné, secretary general of the CFE-CGC (union of executives), was heard at the National Assembly. And he challenged the deputies of the majority as follows: “The share going to employees has dropped significantly. While the part paid in dividends, it has tripled. What are you doing to rebalance this sharing of value? Nothing, your bill provides nothing. On the contrary, you make things worse. So, your policy, for whom do you conduct it? For French employees or for Anglo-Saxon pension funds? »
This is the blind spot, and yet central, of the economic debate: the sharing of added value. In France, the last report on the subject dates from 2009, under Nicolas Sarkozy, entrusted to the director of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) at the time, Jean-Philippe Cotis.
What came of it? From the post-war period to the 1970s, the wage share hovered around 70%. Then it reached a high point in the early 1980s, nearly 75%, under the cumulative effect of the oil crisis, the struggles of post-68 workers, the arrival of the left in power. This share then fell sharply, from 1983, by nearly ten points, falling to approximately 65% under the shock of the “competitive disinflation”. We can consider that it has been more or less stable since, but stable at its lowest point since the post-war period.
” An unusually high share”
This official document deserves to be updated. But more recently, in 2021, INSEE confirmed this unequal sharing: “The corporate margin rate has soared to around 36%, its highest level since 1949, when the institute began measuring this ratio”according ReleaseDecember 2, 2021. Even with a dip in 2022, it remains at high levels.
And what is true in France is true in the world: “The profit share is unusually high now (and the wage share unusually low)noted in 2007 the Bank for International Settlements. In fact, the amplitude of this evolution and the range of countries involved have no precedent in the last 45 years. » (Working Papers, no. 231, Basel, 2007). This calls for several comments on our part.
The sums at stake are immense. One point of gross domestic product (GDP) in France is 25 billion euros. Reviewing this sharing, there are therefore tens of billions of euros, if not hundreds of billions, which are to be redistributed. And the “pension deficit” immediately filled.
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