Stellantis: well done Tavares, you earn 1200 times the salary of an average Italian worker
Carlos Tavares' colossal remuneration package (36.5 million euros) was approved by Stellantis shareholders on Tuesday 16 April, despite the harsh criticism it aroused from many shareholders. According to calculations by the French magazine “ Marianne “, the increase received by the boss is in fact disproportionate compared to that received by employees in recent years.
Tavares is the classic example of a modern manager who gets rich while his employees languish.
Stellantis shareholders said “yes”. Meeting at the Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 16 April, they approved a very substantial increase in the pay of Carlos Tavares, the CEO of the car manufacturer which includes Peugeot and Citroën. In any case, their opinion was only advisory. P
n the year 2023, the Stellantis boss could therefore earn as much as 36.5 million euros, according to the company's annual financial report. It is the equivalent of 878 years of average salary in France, 1200 years in Italy . Is it really worth 870 French and 1200 Italian employees? Even though workers no longer count for anything in Stellantis.
Does Tavarez believe he alone is the author of the success, so to speak, of Stellantis? only he works in the company? Are there no middle managers? Is it possible that a single man has such great demands?
As has been the case for several years now, the amount of this pay has been the subject of harsh criticism, particularly from trade unions. Two years ago, Emmanuel Macron himself expressed his dismay, describing Carlos Tavares' "astronomical" remuneration as "shocking and excessive". It should be remembered that if the President of the Republic is justified in interfering, it is because the French State is a shareholder of Stellantis through Bpifrance. And evidently this year Tavarez's salary is good for both Macron and Elkann
The head of the automotive giant defends himself by underlining that his remuneration is established mainly based on the company's financial results. These results are indeed excellent. Last year, the company recorded a record profit of 18.6 billion euros, but are they solely responsible for it? Do all the other employees count for nothing? and were they made based on long-term decisions or just to maximize current profit?
Everyone will have their own opinion. But to shed light on the matter, Marianne analyzed the financial documents published by the company (available here and here). In doing so he noted that the increase in Carlos Tavares' salary was disproportionate to that of the employees.
To make our calculation, we started from 2015, the first full year in which the Portuguese boss was at the helm of PSA (Citroën and Peugeot). We compared the increase in your salary with the increase in payroll costs per employee, taking into account inflation*.
The results are very clear: Carlos Tavares' pay increased eleven times faster than that of employees . While per capita payroll costs, adjusted for inflation, have increased by an average of 2% per year, Stellantis' boss pay has increased by 23% each year.
The automotive giant's profits are therefore poorly distributed. And the company finds it very difficult to justify itself. To try to get out of it, the group believes that its boss's salary should be compared with that of multinationals such as Boeing in the United States (Dave Calhoun, 31 million euros for 2023).
But this seems like a bad idea. While their salaries are comparable on paper (within 5.5 million euros), Boeing appears to be a less unequal company. The ratio of Boeing employees' average pay to that of their boss is 154, according to the American Federation of Labor website. This is already a colossal fact. But Carlos Tavares is off the charts, earning 518 times more than the average employee, according to his company's financial report.
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The article Stellantis: well done Tavares, you earn 1200 times the salary of an average Italian worker comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/stellantis-bravo-tavares-guadagni-1200-volte-lo-stipendo-di-un-italiano/ on Thu, 18 Apr 2024 06:00:36 +0000.