While the bitter potion of pension reform is definitely not passing on to the majority of French people who are strongly affected by galloping inflation, it is not surprising to see the theme of wealth sharing come back in force in the debate. audience. Emmanuel Macron also seized on it himself, wishing from March 22, during his television interview on TF1 and France 2, that “companies distribute more to their employees”. François Hollande, his predecessor at the Elysée, chose “the Obs” this week to detail his plan to tax the richest. In this context, the study on wage inequalities published this Thursday, April 26 by the NGO Oxfam is likely to cause some turmoil, as its results show their increase.
François Hollande: his plan to tax the ultra-rich
These inequalities are always more glaring when large French companies are making comfortable profits. However, since 2020, the stars of the CAC 40 have never earned so much money in their entire history. Their owners were considerably enriched as a result. The 42 French billionaires have even increased their fortune by 58% in two years. And the year 2022 confirmed this trend, with yet another record: that of the amounts of dividends and share buybacks paid to shareholders of the forty groups of the main French stock market index, i.e. 80 billion euros.
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Have employees belonging to the largest French companies benefited as much from this financial windfall? No, replies Oxfam. The NGO calculated that“within the top 100 listed French companies, the share distributed to employees has fallen by 10 points since 2009”. In absolute terms, more than 62 billion euros should have been allocated to them in 2021, if the distribution of added value had been identical to that of 2009.
According to Léa Guérin, advocacy officer on the issue of the regulation of multinationals at Oxfam, “this 10-point drop was made to the detriment of the lowest salaries, particularly impacted by the price increase”. A check for an additional 10,000 euros: this is what each CAC 40 employee should have received on average in 2021 if we had continued to redistribute the wealth created in the same way as twelve years ago.
This CEO who earns 1,484 times more than his average employee
At the same time, the income gap between managers and employees also continues to widen. Between 2011 and 2021, the 100 largest French companies increased the remuneration of their CEO by 66%, and only 21% that of their employees.
In the ranking of the most unequal companies established by Oxfam, the company Teleperformance, world leader in call centers, whose CEO earns… 1,484 times more than the average employee of the company. Stellantis, Automaker, which owns brands like Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and Opel, ranks second with a pay gap of 1,139 between boss Carlos Tavares and the average worker. In third place is Dassault Systèmes: the software publishing company pays 385 times more to its manager than to its average employee.
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In addition, female leaders are also paid less than their male counterparts: they earn on average 36% less. Men posting salaries of 4.9 million euros per year, against 3.1 million euros for women.
To remedy these abysmal gaps, Oxfam France is making several proposals: setting a salary scale from 1 to 20 in the company, removing financial compensation criteria in favor of social and climatic criteria, reforming the governance of large groups by strengthening the presence of employees on boards of directors or even modifying taxation so that capital ceases to be taxed less than labour. An ambitious program. Easier said than done.
