The French Association of Private Companies (Afep), which brings together 114 large groups, expressed this Wednesday its “skepticism” about the establishment of a mandatory dividend for employees planned by the Government, which according to him could serve competitiveness.
“There is some skepticism on the part of Afep about the very notion of an employee dividend,” said Jean-Luc Matt, general director of the organization that includes Air France KLM, Carrefour, Danone, Société Générale, Seb or Vinci among its members. , during a press conference. “To say that value is insufficiently or badly distributed among the stakeholders of the companies, in particular between the capital and the workers, is not, from the point of view of large companies, something that corresponds to reality”, he added. additional.
In France there are already value sharing mechanisms, he stressed, such as profit sharing (bonus linked to the performance or results of a company) or participation (mandatory mechanism in companies with more than 50 employees with immediate payment or deposited in savings) . Adding more would increase the cost of labor and would not “add favorably to competitiveness,” Mr Matt said.
Employees “main beneficiaries” of added value
According to Afep, employees are the “first beneficiaries” of the added value created by its member companies, with a share of 61%, “stable over time”. Thus, its members paid in 2021 more than 108,000 million euros to its 2.1 million French employees: 100,000 million in gross remuneration, 6,300 million in profit sharing and profit sharing and 2,300 million for employees and shareholders.
“That’s not to say there aren’t new things we can discuss,” such as making existing systems more readable and flexible or making employee ownership more secure, but “we should start from the realization that there’s already a lot going on.” done in this area”, insisted Jean-Luc Matt.
The employee dividend is a measure proposed by Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign to allow a better distribution of company profits to employees. However, he encountered resistance from businessmen. The Executive has started a consultation on “shared value” with the desire to reach proposals at the end of January, while categorically ruling out indexing salaries to maximum inflation in 1980, which cuts the purchasing power of the French.
He indicated that a binding law on the dividend to employees will be approved “during the five-year period” so that companies that pay dividends also pay them to their employees. For Afep, faced with an “automatic” dividend mechanism for employees, rather than focusing on dividends paid to shareholders, it is necessary to take into account the “economic prospects” in the midst of an energy crisis that threatens economic growth.
Source: BFM TV
