“Which site will be next to close? We are obviously afraid for colleagues from other factories”

Reportage The group, world leader in tires, has just announced the closure of the Cholet and Vannes factories, putting 1,254 people out of work. The cause: increased Chinese competition and soaring energy costs. One more step in the deindustrialization of France?

And “decent salary” for the 132,000 Michelin employees around the world: in April, this promise, a first for a multinational, allowed the boss of the French tire group, Florent Menegaux, to seduce part of the left. Less than a year later, it is nothing more than an empty slogan, mocked on a banner which decorates the gate of a condemned factory: “Decent salary? Indecent dismissal. »

Since they learned, on November 5, of the closure “no later than the beginning of 2026” At the Michelin factory in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire), which employs 955 people, around a hundred employees take turns night and day on a strike picket set up at the entrance to the site. “Arrived young and motivated, left worn and damaged, you owe us more than speeches and charity”, we read on one of the walls of the factory. In Vannes (Morbihan), 299 people will…