The French Association of Private Enterprises (Afep), which brings together 114 large groups, expressed its “skepticism” on Wednesday about the establishment of a compulsory employee dividend envisaged by the government, which according to it could serve competitiveness.
There is a certain skepticism on the part of Afep on the very notion of an employee dividend, declared Jean-Luc Matt, the director general of the organization which counts among its members Air France KLM, Carrefour, Danone, Socit Generale, Seb or Vinci, during a press briefing.
To say that the value is insufficiently or badly distributed between the stakeholders in the companies, in particular between the capital and the employees, is not, from the point of view of the large companies, something which corresponds to reality, has- he adds.
Value-sharing mechanisms already exist in France, he underlined, such as profit-sharing (a bonus linked to the performance or results of a company) or participation (compulsory mechanism in companies with more than 50 employees with an immediate payment or placed in savings).
More than 108 billion euros paid in 2021
To add more would increase the cost of labor and would not contribute favorably to competitiveness, specified Mr. Matt.
According to Afep, employees are the primary beneficiaries of the added value created by its member companies, with a share of 61%, stable over time.
More than 108 billion euros were thus paid in 2021 by its members to their 2.1 million French employees: 100 billion in gross remuneration, 6.3 billion in profit-sharing and profit-sharing and 2.3 billion for employee shareholders.
This does not mean that there are not changes that we could discuss, such as making the systems in place more legible and more flexible or making employee shareholding more secure, but we must start from the observation that there is a lot has already been done in this area, insisted Jean-Luc Matt.
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The employee dividend is a measure put forward by Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign to allow a better sharing of company profits towards employees. However, it comes up against resistance from employers.
The executive has initiated a consultation on the sharing of value with the desire to reach proposals by the end of January, while it categorically excludes indexing wages to inflation at its highest since the 1980s, which cuts into the purchasing power of the French.
He said a binding law on the employee dividend so that companies paying dividends also pay their employees would pass during the five-year term.
For Afep, opposed to an automatic employee dividend mechanism, more than focusing on dividends paid to shareholders, it is necessary to take into account the economic outlook in the midst of the energy crisis which threatens economic growth.