© BELGIUM
On this Tuesday, January 9, the CEO of a Bel20 company will have already earned as much as an ordinary employee in a year. This is what the French-speaking Christian employee union CNE says, which is why it declares January 9 as ‘CEO jackpot day’.
According to the union, the median wage of an employee in Belgium is 3,878.7 euros gross per month. The CEO of a company in the Bel20, the index of the twenty most important shares on the Brussels stock exchange, earns that amount in 5.2 working days, according to CNE. “Such a CEO earns fifty times the median salary,” it says.
According to figures collected by CNE, the median salary of a Bel20 CEO was 2.7 million euros in 2022, or almost 10,390 euros per day. This compares to a median annual salary of almost 54,000 euros for an employee.
The union also points out the evolution of real wages since 2014. While those for the CEO of a Bel20 company increased by 37 percent between 2014 and 2021, the increase for the median wage was 6 percent, CNE says.
The French-speaking Christian employees’ union is again calling for the abolition of the 1996 wage standard law, because according to it, it blocks possible wage increases for a large proportion of employees.