France's Macron wants companies to share more profits with workers

PARIS (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron, facing protests over an unpopular pension reform, said on Wednesday he wanted the government to take measures ensuring that companies share more of their profits with workers.

Macron, seeking to regain the political initiative after narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote in parliament this week, made the remarks in a rare TV interview.

"We have big companies that are in the process of buying back their own shares... we need to find the right way but they must share (profits) more with their employees," Macron said.

He said he would ask the government to work on what he called an "exceptional contribution" by companies to the benefit of workers.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that the idea was to spur a "substantial" increase in contributions to profit sharing schemes by companies with more than 5,000 employees that buy back their own shares.

"We could imagine a doubling of the sums paid into profit-sharing schemes," Le Maire said in the French senate, adding the government would make a proposal to unions and employers as a basis to negotiate an agreement.

(Reporting by Blandine Henault additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, writing by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)