PSA Peugeot Citroen have sparked furious debate in France by doubling its chairman’s salary to €5,000,000.
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin weighed into the angry conversation by claiming that the raise is “harmful.”
PSA Peugeot Citroen are one of Europe’s biggest carmakers, and recent company documents revealed that their chairman Carlos Tavares pocketed €2,750,000 in 2014, but saw it doubled to €5,000,000 in 2015.
The automaker praised Tavares for leading the brand consummately as they restructured.
Peugeot Citroen: Back To Black
Tavares also led them out of the red and into the black in 2015, and guided the organisation to a tidy profit of €1,200,000,000.
As criticism rose last week, it was revealed that the French government asked its representatives in PSA Peugeot Citroen (it has a 13% stake) to give the thumbs down the salary increase.
Finance Minister Sapin said that if the government had a bigger share the increase “would have been blocked.”
“The increase is harmful,” said Sapin. “Everyone can see it. We are in a time when we need to make an effort, and it needs to be more or less shared.
I say more or less because we are talking about figures that are so huge that one can barely comprehend what they mean.”
The CFDT labor union have also vehemently criticised the raise and say that it “causes a lot of damage to social cohesion,” while pointing out that PSA Peugeot Citroen’s thousands of employees have also made a big contribution to the company’s resurgence.
Others, however, have backed the move with the Medef employers’ association saying that the guys at the top “are heroes.”
Will Titterington
He believes that words can take on a transformative aspect and wants to help people make better decisions today.
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