Other times, other managerial mores. Today, the brilliant manufacturer Henry Ford would undoubtedly pass for a dangerous Marxist. Anxious to preserve social peace in his factories and to calm union enthusiasm, he enacted, at the beginning of the 1930s, a simple and wise principle of remuneration: the boss must not earn more than 40 times the salary of the workers on the assembly line. . By this yardstick, Carlos Tavares, the boss of Stellantis (Peugeot-Citroën, Fiat Chrysler), would have to give up… 96% of his emoluments. In other words, going from its 36.5 million euros – paid for the year 2023, in the form of fixed remuneration, bonuses, free shares and other employer bonuses – to “only” 2.8 million euros, or 40 times the average remuneration in the group.
But, looking more closely at the accounts published by all the CAC 40 companies, the vast majority of the leaders of this famous stock market barometer explode the “Fordist” meters of decency.
