In mid-April, global tire giant Michelin announced its intention to introduce a “living wage” for its employees to meet the basic needs of families. This measure is in line with the history of the Group, which has deep roots and family ties, and which has always strived for the well-being of its employees and has been pushed in this direction from the beginning by the Catholic faith of its founders. . . Christian paternalism, so criticized by the left, still has a bright future.
The announcement was made on Wednesday, April 17th by Florent Menegault, the Group’s current CEO. After discovering that 5% of the group’s employees, or about 7,000 people, were earning very low wages, he said he wanted to roll out “decent wages” to 132,000 employees around the world. Announced.
Michelin didn’t invent the living wage. In 1919, the founding documents of the International Labor Organization already included reference to “a guarantee of wages guaranteeing decent living conditions.” This concept is currently championed by various international organizations such as the United Nations Global Compact. The details were revealed by the Global Living Wage Coalition. It is okay to talk about a living wage if “the remuneration that a worker receives for a normal week’s work in a particular place is sufficient to ensure a decent standard of living for the worker and his family.” can. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing, and other basic needs (including precautionary savings). ”
The tire giant expressed it in its own words. Florianne Vialla, the group’s remuneration director, said the remuneration actually exceeds the national minimum wage, and in some countries is equivalent to “1.5 to 3 times the minimum wage” on average. It would be accompanied by a “universal social protection shield”. Already in France, Michelin employees are not paid the SMIC minimum wage, as they consider the Michelin group’s minimum wage (totaling 1,766 euros per month) insufficient. The group has set the annual threshold for a family of four (two parents and two children) living in Paris at 39,638 euros, or 25,356 euros in the Clermont-Ferrand region, where Michelin is headquartered. In contrast, SMIC’s threshold is 21,203 euros. national level. The gap between the two regions is already quite large. Therefore, we can imagine that the “fair wage” proposed by Michelin will vary considerably from country to country, meaning that the group exists not only in China but also in India and Brazil.
The social protection shield is expected to be introduced by the end of 2024. This includes health insurance for employees and their children, a minimum of 14 weeks of maternity leave, and 4 weeks of parental leave at 100% pay. It also includes death benefits and education pensions for children, which are paid in a lump sum for at least one year, regardless of the employee’s years of service.
At Michelin, management has long believed that the state cannot do everything to ensure the comfort of workers, and that it is up to employers to fulfill their responsibilities. For managers, this is a fair reward for employees’ efforts to keep the company afloat and grow. “You invest time in developing yourself and the company, and in return we give you at least the means for a family.” For 4 people, 2 parents and 2 children, 1 time “The salary covers housing, food, leisure activities and a small amount of savings,” the group’s president, Florent Menegault, told AFP.
This corporate paternalism has been in the Michelin Group’s DNA since 1889 when it opened its first bicycle brake pad factory with 52 employees in the Auvergne town of Clermont. The group’s sales currently amount to 28 billion euros (2023 figures). It is the only company included in France’s CAC 40 stock index and is headquartered outside the Paris area. Michelin remains strongly attached to Auvergne’s identity and the city that its policies have helped deeply shape.
The company’s founder, Edouard Michelin, was keen from the start to ensure that the company’s growth was accompanied by an ambitious social policy for its employees. The company was one of the first in France to offer family allowances, at a time when the French government paid little attention to the issue. The life of a Michelin employee intrigued his boss from his birth until his death. In Clermont, he built schools, cooperatives, hospitals, as well as housing for them, a garden city famous at the time. The children learned to swim in the Michelin pool. Every Sunday, families gathered for Mass at the parish of Jesus the Holy Worker. In 1911, a sports club, the Association Sportive Michelin (ASM), was founded. This club still exists today, and its direct successor, Clermont’s rugby team, the Association Sportive Montferrandeise Clermont Auvergne, currently offers some of its players to the French national team. I am a person.
His son, François Michelin, ran the company from 1955 to 2002 and helped it become a world leader in the tire industry. Deeply respected by his employees, he did not hide his beliefs. He hated unions and wanted more than anything to run the company as a family business. He was strongly convinced that social progress could only come from economic progress and that nothing could be expected from the state in this regard. Hence his determination to make his business more prosperous than ever before. He has a deeply rooted Catholic faith inherited from his grandmother, which guided his social and economic choices throughout his life and made him a very special entrepreneur in the French business world. . At his funeral, held in Clermont Cathedral in 2015 by the bishop himself and one of his sons, who is now a priest, the crowd was so large that the building could not accommodate them all, and the Mass was held in the city center. It had to be rebroadcast on the big screen. His son Edouard took over in 2006, but then died in a tragic boating accident.
The French left has always despised this dynasty, looked down on its paternalism, criticized it as nothing more than an instrument of domination in the service of an all-powerful employer, and failed to realize that workers did not see it that way. . It was and still is common knowledge that Michelin is a great place to work. Caring for the well-being of its employees is not its only advantage. Since its founding, the company has promoted various profit sharing systems for employees and skillfully strengthened employees’ attachment to the company. The modern concept of corporate social responsibility is a continuation of the old ideas of the fathers of the French tire industry.
Businesses were struggling and going through difficult times and had to make changes. But no matter what Michelin’s critics say, the company has managed to maintain its corporate ethics even at the height of the turmoil. Although the group has aimed to significantly reduce production costs, it remains one of the tire manufacturers least likely to relocate. And when the time came to make the sometimes inevitable downsizing, the Christian conscience of the company’s directors was also evident. When Michelin closed its factory in France, it promised to leave no one behind by providing training and reinvigorating the factory, as the heir to a socially responsible past.
“Management teams have always struggled to avoid forced layoffs. There was a very strong corporate culture that continues today,” says Pierre-Antoine de, former AFP editor-in-chief and author of AFP. Ne points out. michelin saga Published in 2008.
Florent Menegault, the current CEO of Michelin and the second-largest company in the industry after Bridgestone, is a play on the initials FM, which stands for François Michelin. He does not claim to be a devout Catholic, nor is he from his family. But he intends to maintain that spirit and maintain the company’s policies, which remain a formidable foil to all critics of big business. Today, at the foot of a volcano in the Auvergne, Michelin continues to prove, effortlessly and courageously, that business and family, profit and humanity, globalism and identity can go hand in hand.
