The NGO Oxfam publishes its annual report on Tuesday April 30. He denounces salary gaps “indecent” between employees and bosses of the CAC 40, Teleperformance, Carrefour and Stellantis are in the lead. “130 times more is not reasonable compared to the efforts made by everyone”insists Cécile Duflot. The Teleperformance group, the world’s number one call center, is at the top of the NGO’s ranking; its CEO, Daniel Julien, earns 1,453 times more than the average salary in his group. Carrefour comes in second place, its CEO, Alexandre Bompard, earns 426 times more than the group’s average salary. And Stellantis is in third place, its CEO, Carlos Tavares, earns 341 times more.
To reduce these gaps, “we need a law”, pleads Cécile Duflot. She says in particular “All right” with Carlos Tavares. Asked about his remuneration this year, the CEO of Stellantis said: “make a law, change the law and I will respect it”. “I think there are a certain number of big bosses who are not hostile to this approach”estimates the director of Oxfam France.
Franceinfo: Your NGO publishes this report every year, with a gap that increases over the years?
Cécile Duflot: With a gap that is crazy! 130 times more is not reasonable compared to the efforts made by everyone. And what is most worrying is that if this gap increases, it is because managers are thanked by shareholders for massively distributing dividends. And if this distribution of dividends takes place, it is to the detriment of employees.
You could be told that managers’ remuneration increases because they meet their objectives.
They hold objectives for the benefit of shareholders, that’s what I was saying. And this is where the system goes wrong. It is no longer the interest of the company that is at stake, it is the interest of the shareholders and an interest which is often purely financial and very short term.
You have Teleperformance, Carrefour and Stellantis on the podium. It’s not the same leading trio as last year, does it change every year?
Surprisingly – or not – Alexandre Bompard, the boss of Carrefour, is second on the podium, while food prices have increased enormously and wages in the sector have been very constrained, including those at Carrefour. And that he is pursuing a social policy which is a totally aberrant policy, at least for the interests of employees, since he is pushing for franchise stores to take employees out of the group’s benefits. At the same time, he massively increased his salary. So the shareholder’s interest is to put pressure on employees. This is unacceptable.
“I think that this salary gap at Carrefour and the position of Alexandre Bompard illustrate the need to regulate these salary gaps and to have a maximum salary.”
Cécile Dufloton franceinfo
Carrefour tells you that your calculations do not correspond “to any reality” because it relates Alexandre Bompard’s remuneration to that of his more than 300,000 employees around the world, despite differences in purchasing power between countries. What do you respond to this argument?
It’s an interesting debate, opened for a long time by NGOs, but also more recently on the part of Michelin, a private company, which wants all its employees to be paid a decent salary. So if Alexandre Bompard justifies his salary by explaining that he manages to further exploit employees by reducing their salaries in a certain number of countries, we can clearly see that the justification itself shows to what extent we are right, it is that is to say to what extent these salary gaps are unacceptable and unbearable.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is asked about his compensation this year. He himself says: “Make a law, I will respect it”.
We agree with Carlos Tavares. And besides, I think that there are a certain number of big bosses who are not hostile to this approach. No one needs to earn in a few hours what an employee earns in a year, simply because there are people who have a sense of proportion. We don’t put all the CAC 40 bosses in the same basket, but it’s true that they compare themselves to each other. So he rightly says “we need a law”. That’s good, that’s what they say. Before there was a minimum wage, there was no law. It dates from 1950.
“We can very well imagine, today, a law which puts a maximum salary and in particular in all companies which benefit from public aid.”
Cécile Duflotfranceinfo
A law on a French or European scale? What do you think she should say? ?
We are in favor of international, European regulation, but it can also firstly be French. We did this on the duty of vigilance, that is to say the obligation for companies to pay attention to the way in which their subcontractors work. We did it first in France, it is becoming widespread at the European level, so we can very well be a pioneer in this area.
There are a lot of disparities in pay and gaps. But the scale is not always the same, it is not always in thousands?
No, and particularly in SMEs, it is not at all of that order. But what we want to point out is precisely that the CAC 40, which drives part of the economy and which also concerns a lot of jobs because we are talking about very large companies, is being unreasonable. in two ways. With regard to a social policy and the fight against inequalities, by increasing these inequalities, by distributing the value created by employees, massively to shareholders, in this kind of Faustian pact, with an increase in the remuneration of big bosses . But at the same time, they are not investing sufficiently in the ecological transformation of their model, in the energy transition of their activities and therefore are following a very short-termist logic. So we want to bring back regulation and measurement, even if it means an obligation… Besides, Carlos Tavares says it well, probably, we cannot decide it ourselves.
“If it is a legal obligation, Carlos Tavares will comply and that is very good. This debate must be taken care of by political leaders, by Bruno Le Maire.”
Cécile Duflotfranceinfo
In this report, you also highlight gender inequalities among CAC 40 bosses.
Yes, first of all, we highlight the fact that there are more CAC 40 bosses who have “Jean” in their first name than there are women. This situation has been going on for a long time, it continues and it is not moving forward. And it also says something about the fact that the way we run these very large companies is between us. And it seems absolutely important to us to go beyond the obligations that have been made for parity on boards of directors. Because creating diversity and fighting against inequalities means doing it at all levels, including at the top of companies.
You also ask for a tax on superprofits. The debate comes up regularly. Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Finance, closed the door by saying that there were enough taxes in France. Do you regret it?
It’s irresponsible.
“At the same time, Bruno Le Maire says that we must make savings on the unemployed, on health… It’s indecent and it creates great tension in the country.”
Cécile Dufloton franceinfo
We saw what happened with the movement against pension reform, which was a financial reform. Everyone saw it clearly. So to say that we are going to make the poorest and all the middle classes pay, but let the super profits fall into the hands of shareholders via dividends, even though these companies were massively helped during the Covid crisis – and we supported this policy of asset buybacks, massively subsidized partial unemployment – this means that when we come into a good situation and when we benefit from indecent profits, we redistribute.