2023-11-09 07:30:21
TotalEnergies has just concluded an agreement which will allow its 35,000 employees employed in France to receive a bonus of 2,000 euros gross to help them reduce their energy consumption and their CO2 emissions. It was signed on November 7, 2023 by the three representative organizations for the entire French scope, the CGT, the CFDT and the CFE-CGC.
This sum can be spent by each employee in the areas of housing and mobility, for one or more projects and over a period of five years, starting January 1, 2024, explains Isabelle Patrier, France director of the giant of energies.
The expenses that will be covered by the company (but never more than 80%) are very broad: It may be the purchase of an electric car or Crit’Air 1, or an electric bicycle, the conversion of a vehicle to bioethanol, the installation of a charging station, insulation work in the home, a change of boiler or even the purchase of high-level household appliances energetic efficiency. Isabelle Patrier specifies that the company’s aid will be cumulative with that of the State such as MaPrimRénov’ or bonuses for electric cars. » The panel makes it possible to satisfy “both employees who own their homes and those who are tenants”.
Support for TotalEnergies’ “collective challenge”
With this financial boost, which will represent a cost of around 100 million euros,” Isabelle Patrier assures that TotalEnergies wants to help its employees participate in the collective challenge represented by the company’s objective of achieving carbon neutrality in 2050. It’s quite pioneering and I don’t believe that other companies have already signed this in France.”
The French group is subject, like all energy suppliers, to the Energy Saving Certificate system and, as such, must subsidize certain work to reduce its customers’ consumption. Isabelle Patrier assures that the aid paid to employees will be too fragmented and heterogeneous to be taken into account in the EWCs. The group’s CFDT confirms that this agreement was not negotiated in this spirit,” according to Geoffroy Caillon, central union delegate.
Avoiding another harsh conflict
Geoffroy Caillon welcomes this agreement, born from the conflict over wages which led to the blockage of refineries last year. We looked for something that contributes to employees’ feeling of belonging to the company, including those in subsidiaries, where salaries are lower. According to him, this is a very innovative agreement, which will perhaps lead other companies to move in this direction.”
TotalEnergies employees already benefit from a reduction on the group’s electricity and gas subscriptions, on the maintenance of their boiler as well as on pellets or fuel, if they are holders of the “Fleet” card .
The agreement comes a few days before the opening of annual salary negotiations. Last year, when the majority CGT demanded a 10% salary increase, an agreement was reached, after a tough strike, with the CFDT and the CFE-CGC for 7.5%. For 2023, an increase of 2% has already been allocated this summer. Enough, perhaps, to defuse the risks of a new conflict this year.
Critical NGOs
The agreement is, however, judged harshly by several NGOs. According to Soraya Fettih, of 350.org, if it turns out that TotalEnergies is trying to pass off these bonuses as actions beneficial to the climate, then this will obviously amount to greenwashing, “since its model is fundamentally climate-killing.” . The NGO recalls that TotalEnergies is both the company which made the largest profits of French companies last year and the year before while investing less than 2% of its profits in clean and renewable energies. On Oxfam’s side, we estimate that the impact of these measures will be anecdotal in relation to the group’s carbon footprint, “which is more or less equivalent to that of France”.
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