Luxury And Wages: Time For Demands in France?

On 4 December 2025, LVMH's Wines and Spirits division is faced with a strike call affecting all of its brands – from Hennessy to Veuve Clicquot – launched by the CGT union for the first time. Employees are demanding, in particular, the payment of an exceptional Christmas bonus or financial compensation, denouncing the cancellation of bonuses and calling for a fairer distribution of wealth.

This is an unusual event in the luxury sector, which is not prone to industrial action and very rarely involved in social movements. This news illustrates the rise of a deep unease in France that could quickly spread to the entire high-end sector.

LVMH's Wine and Spirits division's profits fell by 33% in the first half of 2025. However, despite a difficult macroeconomic environment – international conflicts, slowing sales in China, rising US customs duties and inflation – the group remained strong: for the 2024 financial year, the Arnault family's company posted a turnover of €84.7 billion.

However, it is the distribution of this wealth that is causing increasingly heated tensions. In May this year, Moët Hennessy announced a reduction of more than 10% in its payroll, representing the loss of around 1,200 jobs, without a redundancy plan, out of a total of 9,400 employees.

At the same time, the LVMH group announced a few days ago that it would pay shareholders an interim dividend of €5.50 for 2025. This announcement reveals LVMH's financial priorities, which favour shareholders rather than job retention or wage redistribution.

This raises the question of the balance between profitability requirements and economic recognition of employees' work, especially since luxury brands build their prestige on expertise, craftsmanship and the exemplary commitment of teams across all branches.

In public and media discourse, luxury groups such as LVMH are portrayed as generous to their employees. According to some sources, the average annual salary at LVMH in France is €69,360, or nearly €5,780 per month, including bonuses and allowances.

In practice, there are significant disparities between positions: a junior shop assistant earns much less, around €2,500 per month, while managers and exceptional artisans can earn very comfortable salaries.

In 2022, LVMH had already paid an ‘anti-inflation’ bonus of €1,000 to €1,500 to employees earning up to three times the French minimum wage, indicating a need for compensation in the face of the cost of living.

While these one-off measures may have seemed sufficient in the past, today employee satisfaction appears to be in free fall. The call for a strike at Moët Hennessy shows that some of the staff feel forgotten or that redistribution mechanisms have become more uncertain at a time of vital strategic choices for the future of the groups and significant economic pressures.

The luxury sector is experiencing a marked slowdown in 2025. LVMH posted a 4% decline in revenue in the first half of the year, with net profit down 22%. The Kering group once again suffered a collapse in sales: in the third quarter of 2025, the group's revenue fell by 10% according to published data. The current economic climate is also presenting difficulties for Hermès and Prada, although these two luxury giants are faring better.

The general economic context is weighing on employment and on companies' room for manoeuvre to maintain or improve employee remuneration. In such a situation, the distribution of wealth becomes a sensitive issue. What is certain is that job cuts and social unrest could seriously damage the reputation of brands and their ‘sacred’ image. The Christmas bonus demanded by the CGT could be just the beginning of a series of major demands.