Stellantis workers went on strike last year, forcing plant shutdowns at the company’s North American production sites to persuade it improve their pay and conditions. The new deal included a 25 percent pay increase over the life of the contract that means assembly plant workers could be earning $42 per hour when that contract expires in 2028.
Cue lots of high-fiving among Jeep, Dodge and Ram workers, but nothing like the celebrations that probably went on in Carlos Tavares’ household when the Stellantis CEO and his family totted up what he got paid last year. The ex-Renault man’s 2023 pay package was 56 percent higher than it had been in 2022, and amounted to €36.5 million ($39.5 m).
That makes it a staggering 518 times higher than the pay of the average Stellantis employee, who in 2022 earned $70,404 (€76,203), Reuters reports. Unlike the line workers, Tavares didn’t have to go without pay while striking for his raise, and then battle to receive a portion of the wages he lost while he was waving placards around in the rain. That’s because he didn’t have to strike at all.
Related: We Don’t Need U.S. Govt Protection From Chinese Automakers, Says Stellantis Boss
But he he did have to work out how to deal with the coming threat posed by Chinese automakers, how to pay for the pay raises given to the striking workers and hit various performance targets. Stellantis said the huge change in Tavares’s salary between 2022 and 2023 was due to a one-time incentive.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union raised the issue of jumbo pay deals for CEOs of the Big Three during the strike last fall (check out the video above). GM boss Mary Barra earned around $30 million and Ford CEO Jim Farley $21 million in 2022 (the automakers haven’t disclose their CEOs’ pay for 2023 yet).