HAS a clear majority of 70% of the votes, the general meeting of Stellantis approved, Tuesday April 16, the remuneration of Carlos Tavares, general director of the Franco-Italian-American automobile manufacturer: 36.5 million euros for the year 2023, including deferred items. The amount is enough to leave you speechless. It makes Mr. Tavares the highest paid boss in the global automobile industry.
The manager, aged 65, will receive for his work accomplished last year 518 times the average annual salary at Stellantis (70,404 euros) or 1,586 years of what a temporary worker who works on the assembly line in the company receives. one of the group’s French factories, an interchangeable operator paid the minimum wage and who does not benefit from any form of participation in the group’s profits.
Stellantis shareholders have chosen to reward the remarkable financial performance of the company, whose stock market value has doubled since the creation of the entity born in January 2021 from the merger between the PSA of the Peugeot family and the Fiat-Chrysler of the Agnelli family. The latter has gotten into the habit of paying the managers of its companies very well, and its governance practices are closer to those of American capitalism than to European practices.
The boss of Stellantis, which generates 52% of its sales in the United States, where margins are the highest, does not miss an opportunity to compare himself to CEOs from across the Atlantic rather than to his peers. Europeans. For him, his salary is proportionate to those of Tim Cook at Apple, paid 99 million dollars (93 million euros), or of Sundar Pichai (Google-Alphabet), who received 226 million dollars in 2022. But we are in Europe and the question of inequalities is much more sensitive there.
Double worrying effect
At the top of the pay scale, Carlos Tavares’ salary risks pushing up that of all bosses. Already, the increase of more than 1 million euros from Luca de Meo, general director of Renault, has gone unnoticed alongside that of 13 million euros from Mr. Tavares between 2022 and 2023. And Patrick Pouyanné, CEO from TotalEnergies, with a salary of around 8 million euros, is a model. At the bottom, factories continue to fight to be competitive with those in other countries and save jobs. Their employees are not likely to see pay increases surpass the inflation of recent years. A worrying double effect.
What is the fair price of a successful manager in a globalized market? To this question, political power would like to be able to impose an answer, as the sums involved appear extravagant in view of the frustrations which are developing in the world of work: salaries which do not pay enough and career developments which no longer ensure as much as before social promotion.
In April 2022, aware of the risks of social explosion, Emmanuel Macron judged “shocking and excessive” the 66 million euros allocated by the council to Carlos Tavares between 2022 and 2028. The head of state then spoke out in favor of the establishment of a ceiling against abusive remuneration for European bosses, at the level of the European Union. The project, due to lack of consensus and perhaps will, remained a dead letter, making the recent comments of the CEO of Stellantis almost ironic: “If you think this is not acceptable, make a law and I will respect it!” » This refusal of self-regulation, at a time when it is necessary to stand together in the face of rising dangers, leaves us speechless. It amounts to a dangerous provocation.