Even in the upper salary levels, many do not feel that they are paid fairly.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf Things are rumbling at SAP. The German employees are dissatisfied with their salary. The displeasure varies depending on the income group and is particularly pronounced in the middle range. In income groups two and three (out of a total of five), almost two-thirds of the workforce consider their income to be “not at all” or “to a small extent” appropriate in relation to their performance.
This is the result of a recently published salary survey by the Pro Participation at SAP list, which is close to IG Metall. The union surveyed thousands of SAP employees last November and December. “The situation at SAP is precarious,” says union secretary Türker Baloglu.
The survey is important for several reasons. It reflects dissatisfaction with last year’s 1.2 percent pay rise. The increase of 2.7 percent for the current year announced by SAP a few weeks ago was also met with resentment in view of rising inflation and the group’s good business figures.
The survey and research by the Handelsblatt allow a deeper look into the salary structures of the software group. According to this, around half of the SAP SE employees are in top levels 4 and 5, where they earn between 80,000 and 200,000 euros. The five career levels at SAP range from young professionals to managers or software engineers with special qualifications.
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Even in the upper salary levels, many do not feel that they are paid fairly. In the top two salary brackets, the survey differentiates between specialists and managers. At the T4 level, 44 percent of executives and 54 percent of professionals are dissatisfied with their salary. In the T5 top salary class, 29 percent of professionals and 40 percent of managers are dissatisfied.
SAP criticized the survey, which would damage SAP’s reputation as an “attractive employer”, as “questionable”. It would also “question the work of the SAP codetermination committees, which have had a fair and objective say in salary management,” according to a statement.
How representative is the survey?
SAP sees a poor representation of the survey. Above all, employees who are close to the union took part. “If you ask people, ‘Do you like to go into the forest?’, you will catch a lot of joggers,” says Klaus Merx, non-union chairman of the works council at SAP.
However, a number of factors speak in favor of the survey. Around a third of those surveyed belong to the top two salary classes T4 and T5. In addition, a large number of employees took part for the first time. 3,583 of the 24,500 German employees answered the questions about salary and satisfaction, 80 percent more than in a similar survey in 2020.
In addition, the unions at SAP have only a few supporters overall, so the distortion is limited. Verdi and IG Metall were only able to win four out of a total of 43 seats at SAP SE in the last works council election. A works council was only established in 2006, and there is still no collective bargaining agreement. Quite a few employees have major reservations about unions and see themselves as IT experts in a special role.
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Works council chairman Merx also confirms the tendency of the survey results, according to which middle-income groups in particular are frustrated. “I can confirm that some of our employees from T2 and T3 are dissatisfied,” says Merx. “I doubt whether it’s two-thirds.”
Head of HR Cawa Younosi rejected the criticism in an interview with the Handelsblatt a few weeks ago. In total, SAP is investing more in German employees than ever before, a total of 50 million euros. For every new euro spent, 48 cents would flow into employee remuneration – “a record value”, according to Younosi.
In principle, SAP’s salary structure is less geared towards compensating for inflation than towards rewarding performance. There is a share program, and most of the salary increase budget of executives can be distributed among employees in different ways. “It’s a clash of different philosophies,” says Younosi, referring to the unions.
More: Insufficient salary increase: Dissatisfaction is growing among SAP employees