“In view of Total's good results in 2018, we are offering our trade unions an overall increase of 3.1% and an exceptional bonus of 1,500 euros for all our employees in France.
This tweet of December 11, 2018, the boss of Total, Patrick Pouyanné, will pay more than he thought.
Justice ruled in favor of several employees who deplored not having received the bonus in full, as revealed by Les Echos.
It was the day after Emmanuel Macron's announcement to set up a tax-exempt bonus, in response to the yellow vests movement (and since renewed in 2020 and 2021), that Patrick Pouyanné had revealed that his group would pay it to his employees.
And even to "all" its employees, as the boss of Total had made clear in his tweet.
1100 euros were missing
During the payment, however, some employees did not receive all of the 1,500 euros of the Macron bonus: those of SASCA, a 60% subsidiary of Total.
They only received 400 euros, or 1,100 euros less than promised ... The company's CGT has therefore decided to take the case to court to claim the full Macron premium.
The judicial court of Créteil (Val-de-Marne) sentenced Total, on November 6, 2020, to pay the missing 1,100 euros ...
Les Echos specify, however, that Patrick Pouyanné's tweet was not the only argument in favor of the conviction. This tweet alone was even considered, "in the absence of additional details", as an "insufficient element" to characterize the group's unilateral commitment to the benefit of SASCA employees. The unions then found a document bearing only the Total logo in which the company specified that "given the national context, all employees of Total and its subsidiaries in France would benefit from an exceptional bonus of 1,500 euros".
