It’s a social innovation just as Michelin likes it. The French tire manufacturer announces “the deployment of the living wage on a global scale”. For its president, Florent Menegaux, in many countries, the minimum wage is not enough to support a family. We must therefore take another reference. Michelin has decided to choose the one proposed by the NGO Fair Wage Network. An employee’s decent salary must allow him to pay for water, food, clothing, accommodation, education for a family of four and allow him the possibility of building up a small precautionary savings .
In France, where the minimum wage is 21,203 euros gross per year, the decent wage calculated by Fair Wage would amount to 39,639 euros in Paris. It would be lower in Clermont-Ferrand: 25,356 euros, or 20% more than the legal minimum. In Greenville, South Carolina (United States), it would amount to $42,235 (around 40,000 euros), compared to a minimum wage of $14,790. In China, it would be 69,312 yuan (nearly 9,000 euros) instead of 29,040 yuan for the legal minimum.
Of Michelin’s 132,000 employees in 175 countries, around 5% did not reach this decent salary level. Around 7,000 people therefore benefit from a catch-up. The living wage is reassessed annually by the Fair Wage Network, sometimes more frequently in countries where inflation is soaring. Michelin does not say how much this decision will cost it. “It was not the subject and it was not evaluated”, explains Florianne Viala, remuneration and benefits director of the group. Florent Menegaux is sure to find his way there: “Employees, when they come out of survival mode, improve their performance. » He is considering extending the practice to his suppliers, such as rubber planters.
This “decent wage” is supplemented by a “universal social protection floor”, which grants maternity-adoption leave of at least fourteen weeks and paternity leave of four weeks, paid at 100%, to all employees who are not protected. by French laws. The company also undertakes to pay the family, in the event of the death of an employee, a capital of at least one year’s salary and an education pension.
Investment in employee training
The personnel director, Jean-Claude Pats, is banking on his social policy to obtain employees “a maximum level of commitment”. Because the Covid-19 pandemic marked a real break: in 2020 and 2021, the attrition rate (employee departure rate) doubled, up to 13.2%, due to resignations. And the group’s transformation needs require a great capacity for adaptation.
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