Par
Martin Leduc
Published on
4 never 2025 to 20h06
Astronomical. Tuesday April 15, 2025, the Stellantis shareholders validated the exorbitant remuneration of their ex-director general. Carlos Tavares will therefore receive 23.1 million euros for the year 2024, with a bonus of 10 million euros and a starting allowance of 2 million euros.
Total of the operation for the 65 -year -old boss: 35 million euros. A sum which seems disproportionate … and which makes react in France, where the average annual salary in the public reaches “only” the 30,360 euros and 32,760 euros in the private sector, according to INSEE (2023).
As for low wages, France has acquired, since 1950 with the SMIG then 1970 with the minimum wage, with a minimum wage. In the same logic, why not set up a maximum salary?
The millions of euros in Carlos Tavares
Because “with 36 million, we also do not buy several houses, or several cars … These are strategies that protect your children during generations and generations, by accumulating money”, explained to us, at the announcement of the allocation of remuneration, in 2024Louis Maurin, director of the observatory of inequalities.
So okay, Carlos Tavares largely worked in the record profit of Stellantis (18.6 billion euros). This is one of the arguments to justify this (very) big salary. But the 259,000 Stellantis employees around the world, who earn 350 times less a year, have something to growl. Especially when you know that the group plans to close factories everywhere, like here in the Yvelines, or there, in Moselle.
“The example of Carlos Tavares shows the limits of self-regulation. It would be good that in the boxes, there is a kind of morality, of ethical behavior which consists in saying that it is not necessary to dig inequalities beyond a certain threshold, “estimates Christian de Boissieu, vice-president of the circle of economists, contacted by actu.fr.
The debate takes even more importance in the light of the PACTE law of 2019, which integrated into the Civil Code the obligation for companies to take into account social and environmental issues in their management. Doesn’t such an disproportionate remuneration go against the broader objective that companies should have: that of contributing positively to society and the economy?
Hence the idea, which “returns very regularly in the public debate”, according to the vice-president of the circle of economists, of a wages. To prevent such a difference from hollow between the patterns and the small hands.
A cap already in place in the public
In the public, such a system already exists: maximum wages cannot exceed 20 times the lowest wages of the main public enterprises, or 450,000 euros at most.
But in the private sector, this is not the case. Yet, as stated, withactu.frGilles Rotillon, professor emeritus of economics at Paris-Nanterre University, “it would be a measure of social justice which would be widely accepted by part of the population”.
But several reasons explain this difference in treatment. The main argument consists in saying that limiting remuneration in the private sector would push the big bosses, objectively gifted for what they do, at the exodus, causing, in fact, a drop in attractiveness of French companies.
Because no other country in the world has private wages. “The remuneration of senior executives is a world market, not French,” recalls Christian de Boissieu.
For Matthias Tavel, deputy LFI at the origin of a bill aimed at limiting the differences between the highest and the lowest salary of a company to 20 times (see box below), “if people want to leave to earn more, because they find that the bait of the gain is more important than the industrial challenge, that they go”.
These indecent remunerations are very often conditioned by the criteria of financial profitability for shareholders. This deforms the corporate social object of the company, and leads to increased financialization and a search for financial results which is potentially against ecological investment for example.
A multiplier that seems amazing if we base ourselves on the salary of Carlos Tavares, for example. With such sums, the least paid employee in Stellantis should receive 1.825 million euros a year. Unlikely.
But “Most of the bosses today earn 4,000 euros. When they manage to pay for themselves, ”notes the deputy withactu.fr. The idea behind his bill: “limit indecency”.
An unanswered bill
In 2024, Matthias Tavel, MP LFI had tabled a bill to limit the highest salary in a company to 20 times the amount of the lowest salary. The idea is not to block, according to him, but to cause an increase in the lowest wages.
Admit that an employee is paid in the minimum wage in a box, the boss’s salary could not exceed 30,000 euros monthly. “And if the boss wants to increase, he must also increase wages below him,” notes Matthias Tavel toactu.fr.
“No human or business manager has more than 20 times the talent of another, or 20 times their needs. Whether there are differences according to seniority, for example, it is possible. But there is a limit to indecency,” continues the deputy.
The bill, adopted in the social affairs committee, may well return to the hemicycle, especially during the LFI parliamentary niche of 2025, which should take place at the end of the calendar year.
And then, who would take advantage of it?
Among the arguments against, we also find the risk that such a supervision be bypassed, via holdings, a premium system, or remuneration via stock options, which do not constitute a salary, for example.
Even if Gilles Rotillon is rather favorable to such a measure: “The idea would be to shoot down the balance of power which makes a minority of people has the majority of the means of production and decides what they are going to do with it,” he notes.
Contacted again by actu.frLouis Maurin, rather against, believes that the number of great ultra-rich bosses should be taken into account in France, “not that high.”
And then, let’s admit: we set a maximum salary, who benefits? The shareholders, for whom profits increase with this reduced payroll. Not individuals. Nor France.
For Matthias Tavel, “the country’s economy would benefit from being piloted by other criteria than” How much we can free up for shareholders ». It deeply distorts the country’s productive structure and its ability to register in the challenges of the XXIe century. If I am told tomorrow that ecological conversion determines very high remuneration, I want to think about it, ”he admits.
Taxation, the real solution?
He believes that there is much better to do, such as acting on taxes. “We could possibly add tax slices,” he proposes informally.
Ditto for Gilles Rotillon, who insists: “The current tax system for very very rich is really favorable”.
As a reminder, the highest tax tranche, at 45 %, concerns the French who earn 180,000 euros or more a year. Between this number, already quite large, and 36 million euros, wouldn’t it take additional tax tranches?
“In the United States, there has been a tax rate for the richest at more than 80 % which lasted for years (between the 1930s and 1970s with marginal levels above 90 % under Eisenhower, editor’s note) and they did not collapse. If we take 80 % and we won billions, in the end, there is a little huh! », Massily slides Gilles Rotillon.
Be that as it may, this idea of a maximum salary is “very strange”, for the director of the observatory. In the same sense, “universal income, I find that it is without interest.
This is an example of fashionable idea which seems perfect and which in the end is not at all in the right direction, ”he concludes.
Contacted, the MEDEF did not respond to the solicitations ofactu.fr.
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