For now, the employee dividend is still very vague, but the idea, on paper, is to force companies that pay dividends to their shareholders to also distribute them to their employees. With this principle: if a group has money for the shareholders, thanks to the wealth created, or good investments, for example, profits drawn from the rise in the price of raw materials such as oil or gas, the employees should also benefit from it.
>> What is the “employee dividend” defended by the government?
Faced with increasingly strong demands for wage increases, Bruno le Maire, the Minister of the Economy proposes to work on a bill which could be adopted next year. And before, failing to organize a major conference or a round table on wages, he recommends an agreement on the sharing of value with the social partners, economists, etc., to give more purchasing power to employees. The minister’s slogan is “profit for all“.
This might not apply to all companies. It’s not very clear, Bruno Le Maire says he doesn’t want to “put on the same level, the SME and the very large group of several thousand employees“. While saying that public companies will also have to set up this system, without really saying how. Difficult in addition to having a model: no country has set up an employee dividend. Originally, it is a campaign promise by Emmanuel Macron, which must supplement the already existing profit-sharing or participation schemes… from which nearly half of private sector employees are still excluded. Companies with fewer than 50 employees are in fact not not required to set up profit-sharing and profit-sharing is optional.
The social partners are not very enthusiastic. Even if the idea is carried by Thibault Lanxade, former vice-president of Medef and boss of SMEs, the majority of business leaders are not jumping for joy. For them, it would be an additional constraint. For their part, the unions fear the gasworks. The CFDT carries in its DNA the will to share the richness of the company but awaits the methods. The CGT rejects the idea as a whole. She sees it as a trick, not to say trick, to avoid hard pay rises.