We are smaller than ever before the heights reached in supermarkets. The price of foodstuffs has increased by at least 11% on the shelves. In Europe, it is even worse. Partly because of the war and the energy crisis. Inflation in the food department in France is now around 13%. It is enormous.
The food giants, subject to very little price regulation, say they had nothing to do with it. Blame it entirely on inflation?
The Metro chain recently announced that in addition to their salaries, its five senior executives shared this year, for their good services, bonuses of 3.7 million dollars. A cherry for the big boss, Éric La Flèche, rewarded with 5.4 million. A salary increase of 6.8%. His annual premium, 1.5 million, jumped 15%. The emoluments of such monuments are astonishing, year after year. In 2015, for example, the salaries of the top five executives at Metro jumped 18%. That of Mr. La Flèche had increased by 22%.
Did the small floor employee experience such salary increases? Has the fruit clerk got his share of the juicy bonuses from these big vegetables?
Elsewhere, in the same sector, the excessiveness appears even worse.
Loblaw, Maxi and Provigo announced a record net profit increase of 29%. To explain these profits in 2022, heir Galen G. Weston said that his low prices now attract more people who drive Mercedes and Range Rovers… A little more and this food baron, whose holdings are estimated at 8.7 billion, would argue that low-income earners have nothing to do with the bulk of its profits!
Michael Medline, the head of Sobeys, meanwhile refuses, as he says, “to apologize for our successes”, while saying that inflation hurts everyone. Yet Sobeys has just made the largest profits in its history! The same thing on the side of Metro. In fact, the big bosses of the food industry have never greased their paws so much, while inviting their customers to donate generously to food banks. Do they take their customers for pears?
On the side of the junk food industry, executive salaries have continued to climb at breakneck speed. The multinational Restaurant Brands International (RBI), which includes both Tim Hortons and Burger King, has just hired Patrick Doyle, the former boss of Domino’s Pizza, the one who publicly claimed that these pizzas were bad. Doyle was offered shares that are estimated to eventually be worth $540 million.
Over the past three years, reports the Globe & Mailthe salary of José Cil, the big boss of RBI, has gone 274 to 973 times that of its average employee. This remains far from the truth since the universe of small hands that he directs is mainly made up of franchisees. In truth, the big boss has received up to 1,600 times the average salary of those who serve, under the name of a burger, a plastic washer placed between two pieces of sponge.
In the middle of the XXe century, the big bosses earned the equivalent of 20 times the average salary of their employees. This ratio has increased, especially since the 1980s. The ratio was around 200 at the beginning of our century. From now on, the average salary of the big bosses reaches the stratosphere, in defiance of any fairness.
By the early hours of 2023, Canada’s highest-paid CEOs had already pocketed the average worker’s salary: $58,800. The 100 biggest earned in 2021 an average of 14.3 million. The equivalent, for a worker, of 243 years of salary.
Business organizations, however, have reason to complain. The bosses are demanding tax reforms that are even more to their advantage, while it is laws to stop their stuffing that are lacking. The big boss of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, has just entrusted to the FinancialTimes worry about capitalism. Because of its excesses? No. Because of socialism! Society, in his words, has become made up of lazy, stupid people who no longer want to work. Since the 19the century, since the workers do not want to accept starvation wages, the bosses affirm in unison that they do not want to work! Bernie Marcus had supported, drum beating, Donald Trump. He now complains, like him, of not being able to say anything. As proof, this long interview in the FinancialTimes ?
At least, are we eating well? International laxity in food quality control makes little headlines. How many clementines did you eat during the holidays to pass on the turkey and the Yule log? According to a French government agency, these easy peelers, which mostly come from Morocco and Spain, contain 74% pesticide residues, including a fungal classified as genotoxic and carcinogenic.
In one of his vigorous editorials, Jean-Robert Sansfaçon had clearly exposed, with his usual talent, the risks of cancer now linked to the use of Canadian grains on which insecticides are nevertheless banned elsewhere. The food inspection agency, Sansfaçon noted, had found traces of glyphosate in a majority of cereals tested, including baby food. What bread, sold at a high price, do we eat?
I mention Jean-Robert Sansfaçon on purpose. He died at the end of the year. When he was editor of To have to, the door of his office gave close to mine. Besides, it was he who had insisted on hiring me. I esteemed him. He had, on many questions, a real aplomb. A head on his shoulders, as they say. And he was good advice. I took advantage of it. He was also quite fond of literature. Which always seems to me to be the result of a precious relationship to the world. In short, I gave him my respect. I would even say, my affection. To his loved ones, my deepest condolences.