In fresh weeks, Stellantis’ former CEO, Carlos Tavares, has had a robust media presence selling his ebook. Considered one of his statements brought about a pointy response. Consistent with his phrases, the President of the Republic would earn up to Stellantis engineer, i.e. 19,000 euros per thirty days. That is false. However past fact-checking, what research are we able to be offering of those declarations and extra widely of the connection between managers and rewards?
Within the fall of 2025, Carlos Tavares, former CEO of Stellantis with a name as a price killer, is absolutely selling his autobiographical ebook, Pilot within the Typhoon (Plon). Paying attention to him, those confessions are hardly ever an workout in self-criticism, however relatively a rehabilitation of his character and his movements on the head of a bunch this is nowadays in a inventory marketplace turmoil, confronted with the scandal of misguided airbags.
Carlos Tavares desires to provide his reality, “his ethics” as he says. This is a wonderful alternative to know your rationality as an financial actor. And shall we say with out uncertainty, that of the previous common supervisor belongs to the class of rationality within the finality, which is in response to the calculation of prices and advantages performed inside the contractual marketplace dating.
We discover no worth or which means in his speech – out of doors the marketplace. At best possible, he tolerates staying inside the felony framework, when he replies to reporters that if his income surprise, the parliament simply has to go a brand new regulation to keep an eye on them. However what’s he speaking about and why does the problem of his source of revenue, in addition to that of his friends, transcend his character and can also be analyzed as a central subject in our societies?
The engineer paid 19,000 euros. Actually?
Let’s first recall the details. Carlos Tavares showed that at round 19,000 euros gross per thirty days, Emmanuel Macron’s wage is “roughly equal (to) the salary of a good Stellantis engineer with between five and ten years of experience”.
The Stellantis unions additionally set the report immediately. A press unlock from the CFE-CGC union condemned the “completely wrong” feedback and specified:
“The average salary of an engineer at Stellantis, with five to ten years of experience, is between 4,000 and 6,000 euros gross per month, including bonuses, according to reliable internal company data.”
It may be surprising {that a} CEO is so oblivious to his corporate’s reimbursement scale, resulting in an absolutely biased illustration of social stratification, particularly when discussing his personal reimbursement. And it isn’t simply a person announcing it, however an investor: Allianz World Traders voted towards the 23 million reimbursement proposed for a vote of shareholders accrued on the staff’s common assembly in April 2025.
Increasingly more complicated reimbursement
It must even be famous that his preliminary bonus of 10 million has now not been paid out, in contrast to different variable remuneration schemes. This finds the level to which nowadays’s wage has transform complicated and individualized, consisting of a set wage, but in addition bonuses, co-payments, benefit sharing, and so forth. Too heterogeneous to be restricted to the honor of employment contracts, they transcend the payroll and display the worker’s registration within the collective that makes up his undertaking. They’re an indication of the social contract.
And that’s the reason why those sums can also be surprising, after they transform so faulty, as on the subject of the Stellantis engineer, or astronomical for the ones of CEOs. Now not such a lot as a result of their untruthfulness, however above all as a result of they divulge Carlos Tavares’ incompatibility together with his personal paintings and the social contract.
Bad house
And Carlos Tavares is not the primary CEO to stumble over the query of his reimbursement. Earlier than him, nonetheless within the automobile sector, Carlos Ghosn skilled his first setbacks when his reimbursement used to be now not voted on the common assembly of shareholders all over the primary yr of the implementation of the Sapin 2 regulation. Thankfully for him, on the time this vote had simplest an advisory worth.
Let’s additionally keep in mind that Patrick Pouianne, the CEO of TotalEnergies, skilled a nasty birthday celebration when he communicated on social networks about his reimbursement, which reacted via criticizing the stratospheric hole between his source of revenue and the typical wage in his corporate. He then attempted to shield himself via evaluating himself to his friends from the sector’s greatest oil teams, revealing that he used to be the least paid of all of them.
A screenshot of Patrick Pojane’s X account
Twitter «In or out»
There’s a distinction right here. Public opinion, just like the regulation that nowadays mandates the disclosure of salary hole signs, units the stipulations for comparability inside an organization. Our CEOs are leaving to enroll in a small globalized elite. Those justifications display that the placement of CEOs is in part advanced out of doors the corporate, which nonetheless offers them a mandate. Is that this any other signal of the breakdown of the social contract?
Any other argument given via Carlos Tavares to justify his charge is in response to the hazards that bosses lift, a speech in keeping with the determine of the entrepreneur. The argument can also be wondered, as a result of all over Covid why efficient risk-taking via front-line workers is rewarded with a low bonus? Chance taking, undoubtedly non-financial, however no much less vital on the subject of Covid, isn’t charged in the similar approach relying at the place.
LCI 2025.
If menace is now not the prerogative of the entrepreneur, what justification can also be given for accepting such variations? As a result of with out a consensus at the which means to be given to variations in wages, they transform inequalities… and inequalities can transform injustices and assets of riot.
What’s the common scenario in France? The dimensions of the Observatory of Inequality tells us that the typical lifestyle is two,147 euros. An Oxfam file states that Teleperformance’s CEO earns 1,484 occasions his corporate’s moderate wage.
Those quantities be offering an order of magnitude and lift the query of easy methods to carry in combination workers in a collective the place the diversities could be so vital as to triumph over the bounds of working out. It’s as a result of the sense this is lacking from the speech of our former CEO that we each transform socially appropriate, even accountable, however above all to get the strengthen of workers and shareholders. Are we able to transform one with such an expanded measuring scale?
