A 2% increase will occur for all employees via a down payment on that which is planned for the end of the year, promised the CEO of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, this Sunday, June 18 on RTL. The manager thus wishes to avoid a crisis similar to that of last year. “We will give a 2% increase to all employees in the middle of the year and a deposit on the increase at the end of the year in order to prevent rather than cure,” said the boss of the oil giant.

A spokesperson for the group told AFP that the measure would apply “from July 1” for workers, employees, technicians, supervisors as well as executives of the “common social base”, without specifying how many people are concerned out of the 35,000 employees in France. “We will take a measure very quickly: as inflation continues […], we will not wait until the end of the year, as in 2022, to have a crisis on the increase in wages at TotalEnergies”, underlined Mr. Pouyanné, in reference to the strikes which paralyzed refineries and oil depots for several weeks in the fall of 2022.

This movement, which began at the end of September at the call of the CGT TotalEnergies, which demanded a 10% wage increase, had caused fuel shortages. A majority agreement was finally signed in mid-October by the CFDT and the CFE-CGC, without the CGT. “This year, we increased by 7.5%, we gave them a 15% increase in their bonus, so the average increase was 10% in our company”, assured Patrick Pouyanné.

The oil major posted $20.5 billion in net profit in 2022, the largest in its history, thanks mainly to soaring oil and gas prices. An overall 10% increase in CEO pay for 2023 was also overwhelmingly passed in May at the group’s general meeting.

In an interview given to the Sunday newspaper, the CEO echoed the remarks of the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, who estimated at the end of May that the “climate activists” were “in their role of alerting” by demonstrating on the outskirts of the general meeting of shareholders of the group, which they accuse of greenwashing. “To say that is not very responsible,” Pouyanné said.