/regions/2024/04/16/maxnewsworldfive706279-661e8b7484a15705696565.jpg)
The shareholders of the car manufacturer Stellantis validated this Tuesday, April 16, 2024 with 70.2% of the votes the remuneration of the group’s general director. This remuneration could reach 36.5 million euros for the year 2023. A purely consultative vote which makes the group’s employees oscillate between anger and, for some, resignation. Reactions at the Sochaux factory in Doubs.
Seven out of 10 shareholders gave the green light to remuneration already considered “stratospheric”, a few weeks ago by the unions of the historic Sochaux factory in Doubs.
In front of the factory doors this Tuesday while the annual general meeting of shareholders takes place in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, many of the employees are resigned. “It’s a shame, that’s all,” says an employee interviewed by our journalists Alexane Marcel and Eric Debief. “Good for him, that’s how it is, that’s life, he’s a big boss” adds another.
The gap with our salaries is big. But it was voted on. People gave it to him. So why not take this money.
An employee of Stellantis Sochaux
“I really hope that one day that will change. Everyone should be united, everyone should put down the gloves, but that will never happen” laments a worker.
The remuneration of Carlos Tavares, boss of Stellantis, will reach 36.5 million euros in 2023. 70% of shareholders have validated this sum. • © LIONEL VADAM / MAXPPP
For the year 2023, Carlos Tavares will therefore receive 36.5 million euros. Including a bonus of 10 million euros linked to the transformation of the group created in 2021 from the merger of PSA and Fiat-Chrysler as well as bonuses awarded only if certain objectives are met by 2025, the last year of his mandate current. Results: remuneration, up 56% compared to 2022, which angers the unions.
“Stellantis has cut 130,000 jobs since 2021. These are factories that are emptying. These are inhumane rates for the workers who are online. And these are salaries that do not allow us to live,” protests Anthony Rué, CGT union delegate. For the latter, Stellantis must agree to increase salaries and not just bonuses of 4,000 euros. “What we are demanding is that there be no more net salaries below 2,000 euros, and above all that salaries be indexed to the cost of living.”
Carlos Tavares’ remuneration, we talk about it as if he were a football player, an American basketball player, but he is our boss.
Bilal Benchaa, CFDT Sochaux Belchamp union delegate
For the unions, the good financial health of the group must involve equitable redistribution. Including for temporary workers excluded from bonuses.
If Tavares earns so much, it is because behind it, there are shareholders who earn even more, and what scandalizes us is that the more money the company makes, the less it redistributes.
Anthony Rué (CGT Stellantis Sochaux)
With its 14 brands including Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Dodge and Opel, Stellantis published on February 15, 2024 a new record profit of 18.6 billion euros for 2023, up 11% year-on-year. Its turnover is close to 190 billion euros.
While traveling in Moselle, Tuesday April 15, Carlos Tavares declared to France Bleu Lorraine: “90% of my salary is made by the company’s results, (…) so this proves that the company’s results do not are apparently not too bad…If you think it is not acceptable, make a law and change the law and I will respect it.”
Several left-wing leaders announced on Tuesday that they wanted to legislate to limit the salaries of big bosses, thus taking Carlos Tavares at his word. “Chiche Mr. Tavares: today I am tabling a bill to set a maximum salary in companies, by limiting the gaps between the highest remuneration and the lowest salaries to 20”, wrote on X the deputy La France rebellious Matthias Tavel.
The head of the socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud, announced that his group will again table a 2020 bill aimed at limiting pay gaps within companies. “In 10 years, the boss of Stellantis has seen his remuneration multiplied by 10. And when I propose indexing salaries to inflation, I am told that it is too much to ask! This world is crazy”, estimated for his part the N.1 of the communists Fabien Roussel.