Stellantis shareholders said ” Yes “. Gathered at a general meeting this Tuesday, April 16, they validated the very sharp increase in remuneration of Carlos Tavares, the general director of the automobile firm which includes Peugeot and Citroën. Their opinion was only advisory in any case. For the year 2023, the boss of Stellantis could therefore earn a whopping 36.5 million euros, according to the company's annual financial report. This represents the equivalent of 878 years of average salary in France.
As has been the case for several years, the extent of this remuneration has been the subject of very strong criticism, particularly from unions. Two years ago, Emmanuel Macron himself was moved by it, already judging the amount “astronomical” of the remuneration of Carlos Tavares “shocking and excessive”. Let us remember that if the President of the Republic is justified in getting involved, it is because the French State is a shareholder in Stellantis through Bpifrance.
The boss of the automobile giant defends himself by recalling that his remuneration is mainly fixed according to the financial results of the company. These are indeed excellent. Last year, the company reported a record profit of 18.6 billion euros.
XXL inequalities
Everyone will have their own opinion. But to provide an element of lighting, Marianne took out his calculator and delved into the financial documents published by the company (to be found here And here). And we observed that the increase in Carlos Tavares' remuneration was out of proportion to that of the employees.
To make our calculation, we started from the year 2015, the first full year carried out by the Portuguese boss at the head of PSA (Citroën and Peugeot). We compared the increase in his remuneration with the evolution of personnel costs per employee, taking into account inflation*.
The results are very clear: Carlos Tavares' compensation has increased eleven times faster than that of employees. When personnel costs per head, adjusted for inflation, increased on average by 2% per year, the remuneration of the boss of Stellantis increased by 23% each year.
Tavares earns 518 times more than employees
The profits of the automobile giant are therefore poorly distributed. And the company is having a hard time justifying itself. To try to get out of this, the group believes that it should instead compare its boss's remuneration with that of multinationals like Boeing in the United States (Dave Calhoun, 31 million euros for 2023).
But that seems like a bad idea. If the amount of their remuneration is indeed comparable on paper (albeit within 5.5 million euros), Boeing seems to be a less unequal company. The ratio between the average compensation of Boeing employees and that of their boss is 154, according to the company's website. American Federation of Labor. It's already colossal. But Carlos Tavares explodes the counters since he earns 518 times more than the average employee, according to his company's financial report…
*As an indicator, we used the consumer price index in the OECD.
