REPORT. "The 3x8, yes it's hard... but it pays": in immersion with the "Michelin" of Cholet

This article is in free access Ouest-France•Vincent DANET.| Photo: OUEST-FRANCEPublished on

Isabelle, Gladys, Pascal, Rémi and Sébastien. They are all five employees of the Michelin industrial site in Cholet, in Maine-et-Loire. A few weeks before the presidential election, as part of our “Immersions” series, they agreed to confide in “Ouest-France” about their daily life at the factory.

On the occasion of the presidential campaign, Ouest-France is launching the “Immersions” series. We have chosen to tell your lives, in their richness and diversity. In Cholet, our journalist Vincent Danet landed with the employees of the Michelin factory and will follow them until the first round. Here is the first episode of his series.

Sitting at the table in her small kitchen, this day in early January, Isabelle tries to remember the date of her entry into Michelin, in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire). “September 24, 2016. From memory, to within a day. She has since been a manufacturing agent there. “At the cutting island. It depends on the OCF workshop, acronym on the meaning of which the worker stumbles. "I'm preparing. I am preparing carcass tablecloths. This is the inside of the tire. »

“I will have to explain this to you”

Struggling to shed light on an attentive but neophyte interlocutor, the fifty-year-old gets up. “I will have to explain this to you. And again, I don't know everything. I'm not the best. You have not chosen the best! Rummaging through a backpack, she pulls out a diagram, a tire and its successive layers. “I do these two, NC1, NC2. The “Tire for Dummies” course continues with paper towels.

The children who must be introduced to the things of life, Isabelle Grasset, 54, knows. The native of Beaupréau-en-Mauges has long worked with schoolchildren, among other professional experiences. The one who helped a teacher from Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse (Landes) for a year spent twenty providing childcare, cleaning and canteen in a school in Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine). Back in the Mauges, Michelin is hiring, she applies.

Four million tires per year

Michelin in Cholet is half a century of history. From the rue de Toutlemonde factory, the first tire came out on October 4, 1970. Three hundred people worked there at the time. In 1980, the Bibendum firm had 2,580 employees. Then, inexorably, the workforce dwindles. At the beginning of 2022, the latest account reports 1,300 employees, including around fifty fixed-term and temporary workers. They produce 4 million light truck and 4X4 tires as well as 50,000 tonnes of rubber compound per year.

The brand, by its notoriety, its image, its power, attracts. After years of more or less long missions in the food industry and industry, Gladys Lévêque was looking for stability, at the age of 30. “I liked going to Michelin, because I had only heard good things about it. It was famous. Just the fact of saying to myself: “Michelin, it's a big company that is renowned worldwide”, right away, I said to myself, I don't go anywhere. »

His stepfather, a “Michelin”

Gladys was hired on September 2, 2013, as a quality checker, hunting for defects on the envelopes, i.e. the tire before being on the rim. Rémi Chaillot, now at the Cholet site, has been with Michelin – in La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée) – for nearly twenty-five years already. Since September 2018, this personnel manager has been a coachbuilder and sheet metal worker when, inspired by his father-in-law, a "Michelin", he in turn becomes one in November 1989.

For the native of Sables-d'Olonne (Vendée), “a company like Michelin, when you had that name, it evoked a lot of things. It was to enter this company which was already very very important at the time. There was that name and my stepfather had told me so much about it and put it so much forward that it had aroused my curiosity. And that's why I went to see what was going on there.

"A year and a half at seventy hours, that's three years!" »

Other than the 50-year-old – most? – pass the door of Michelin, in La Roche-sur-Yon, Cholet or elsewhere, in a more pragmatic way. Two years his junior, Sébastien Gelineau is one of them. Bac pro Commerce in his pocket, the young man at the time, born in Saumur (Maine-et-Loire), but Choletais at 1 year old, became department manager in a large area of ​​​​the city. “For a year and a half, but at seventy hours a week, that's three years! »

Tired of a “sustained pace”, “not paid”, to say not enough, this son of a sales representative leaves. He readily confesses, “I didn't really know what to do, but my sister worked in a temping agency”. We are in 1995, Michelin Cholet, then in search of labor, opens up to temporary workers, Sébastien rushes into the breach. “And since I was super good, they kept me. He is now a tire and casing repairer.

A science baccalaureate failed twice

Pascal Lemoullec, born in Yonnais with Breton origins, joined Michelin on a temporary basis, like his colleague. After two failures in the scientific baccalaureate, "the second by little, a half point in remedial", this son of a plasterer and then an industrial carpenter went through vocational training. Specialized in mechanics and electricity, he was recruited in La Roche-sur-Yon in 2014, signing a permanent contract in November and starting production.

Yesterday in La Roche-sur-Yon assembling the sheets of 70 to 90 truck tires per day, like today maintaining the machines as an agent, Pascal, 41, is subject to so-called shift work . With this operation, Michelin Cholet never sleeps, even on Sundays. Isabelle, Gladys, Sébastien, Rémi for fifteen years, all know the 3x8: 5 a.m. – 1 p.m. one week, 1 p.m. – 9 p.m. the next, 9 p.m. – 5 a.m. the third, and again.

"You have to sleep a little, otherwise you can't hold on"

Met at her home in Saint-Germain-sur-Moine, delegated municipality of Sèvremoine, Isabelle is then in the 3x8 from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., which takes place over six days, from Monday to Saturday. It's around 4 p.m., she explains that “it leaves time in the afternoon, but you have to sleep a little, because otherwise you can't hold on”. Up at 3:15 this evening, she will go to bed at 9:00 p.m. Which does not mean asleep in the sleep of the just, far from it.

Insomniac? The old stitcher in the shoe was not before Michelin. "We become it," she says. Even when I'm on vacation… I don't sleep at night, I never sleep. Finally, I sleep… badly. And that's the 3x8s. It disturbs sleep a lot. This difficulty appeared “after a year or two. So imagine people who have been doing this for twenty years, ”adds the one who would like to live in Cholet to avoid the road.

This rhythm, Gladys followed it between 2013 and 2016, adapting to the 3x8 afternoon or night. The morning one was harder. “I'm usually a night owl, so, of course, falling asleep before midnight is hot. You have to get up at 3:15 a.m., 3:30 a.m., to leave at 4:15 a.m. to work. When we are in the morning and we have small nights, we come home at 1 p.m., we eat, we take a nap, so, inevitably, during the day, she is dead. »

At 43, the resident of La Renaudière (Sèvremoine), will find the 3x8. Since 2016, to facilitate the care of her two daughters, she works in EFS, weekend team, twenty-eight hours, from Friday 1 p.m. to Sunday 5 a.m. The EFS will be removed at the end of March. Gladys will have to get up at 3:15 a.m. every three weeks. “It's been forty-eight hour weeks. The week in the morning, I find it hard. At Michelin, Saturday morning is one morning too many. »

Better than 3x8, 4x8

As a couple, but childless, Pascal even sticks to 4x8s. “We work two to four days in the morning, after that we spend the night, and afterwards, in the afternoon. And we work Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is 1-11 p.m., ten hours straight. And then on Sunday, it's 7 p.m. – 5 a.m. We go to work a lot on weekends for a month and the next month we are quieter, we have our weekends. It's every other month. »

The Choletais since the summer of 2020 notices it, “it is difficult to keep people in relation to the schedules. It's mostly night work. There are those who can't stand it. Afterwards, it's the rhythm of sleep and the rhythm of eating. Depending on the schedule, we eat and sleep at different times. Some are struggling to recover. There are young people who have never done 2x8, 3x8. When we poach at 5 a.m., they can't sleep before 10 a.m. »

In 2016, the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety issued a report entitled “Assessment of health risks related to night work”. According to him, shift or night work has a "proven effect" on drowsiness, sleep quality, the occurrence of metabolic syndrome and a "probable effect" on mental health, cognitive performance, obesity, diabetes. and coronary heart disease.

The "Michelins" are not the only ones to know 3x8, 4x8 or their equivalents. According to a 2018 analysis by the Animation, Research, Studies and Statistics Department, based on an INSEE survey, 43.8% of full-time employees in 2017 worked according to at least an atypical schedule during the month (8 p.m. – midnight, midnight – 5 a.m., Saturday, Sunday). Ten percent work at least once a month at night (midnight – 5 a.m.).

"Yes, it's hard, but it pays better"

Big weeks, night work, atypical schedules, but which are accompanied by compensation. Salaries, first. Isabelle does not hide it. “What makes me stay, the 3x8s, yes it's hard, but it pays better. Compensatory rest, then. For Sébastien, "people outside, sometimes they say you have ten weeks of vacation, but they haven't understood that you have five like everyone else, the rest is the extra hours. ".

Aged 51, the Choletais is on sick leave. "I had to do 15 days in December and 15 days in October," he tries to remember over a homemade coffee. Achilles tendon and knee are affected, although this time not due to his position at Michelin. Because if the factory of the ^21st century is no longer that of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, work is automated, making it less traumatic, but it still generates occupational diseases.

Until 2016 and for "at least seven or eight years", Sébastien was on a "MAC", a machine to manufacture carcasses, part of the tire envelope. “We opened large shutters to be able to intervene and often we are forced to do like this – mimicking a broad gesture of the arm – I don’t know how many times a day. “Result, loose left shoulder, passage on the billiards and several months of stop, before a change of position.

According to the CGT, the majority among the factory workers, in 2021, the number of accidents at work was around 150. In particular, according to the union, the "pressure" exerted on the employee. In a global tire market that has become ultra-competitive, Michelin must produce more, better, differently and differently, to remain competitive. For management, this involves, among other unpleasant measures, the closure of industrial sites.

The heartbreak of the closure of the La Roche site

Today in Cholet, Pascal and Rémi experienced this heartbreak as closely as possible when the La Roche-sur-Yon factory, 619 employees, closed its doors at the end of 2020. However, the maintenance agent did not experienced the empty factory and the reclassification workshops. “I was scheduled to come to Cholet for six months as reinforcements and four days before coming, we learned that the factory was closing. In June 2020, the forty-something signed his transfer to join Michelin Cholet.

Pascal and his wife then live in an apartment in La Roche-sur-Yon, 45 minutes from Cholet. A new reflection begins. “We discussed it with my wife, because she too had to quit her job. Do we agree to move everything, to change our lives? The couple answered yes, moved into a small house in the center, with a garden. Madame, nursing assistant, finds work in just two weeks, in Maulévrier.

For Rémi, the closure of the Yonnais site was of another violence. Because he's been in this factory for thirty years. Because he went from manufacturing agent in 3x8 to executive as personnel manager. Because responsible for personnel, precisely. The news, “you receive it in the face. We knew we were in a difficult situation, but there is always hope, there is always the will to present something.

While accompanying the employees for a whole year – “I knew almost all of them, for many, I had worked with their dad, or their mom” – the fifty-year-old thinks about his own future. “Something like that is a tsunami, so you ask yourself a lot of existential questions. Is it time to leave? Do I perceive what is offered to me and I go to something else? »

The old, "tattooed"

Like Pascal, Rémi, a man of challenges, of personal challenges, chooses Michelin and Cholet. “We are used to saying that the elders are tattooed. It's a bit like that. There is a sense of belonging which is very strong”, he smiles while sitting at the large table in his Yonnais pavilion. Because this father of two girls aged 21 and 26, one of whom is still at home, has decided, with his wife, to stay in La Roche-sur-Yon and go on the road.

Their suitcases barely put down at the Cholet factory, another thunderclap for the Yonnais, but also Gladys, Isabelle and Sébastien. January 2021, Michelin, 24.1 billion euros in turnover in 2019 (1.7 in profits), announces the elimination, over three years, of 2,300 jobs in France out of 20,000 (127,000 worldwide ). According to its president, Florent Menegaux, there is no plan for "neither forced departure nor new site closure".

The Cholet site concerned by this France Competitiveness and Simplification Project lost 90 jobs in 2021, in particular via a collective contractual termination (RCC). In Cholet as elsewhere, the mantra is certainly no forced departure, but the project, more called plan, worries. “The factory will not last long, imagines Sébastien. Me, when I joined Michelin [in 1995], we were almost 1,800 and there, we are 1,100, a little more. »

Like this CGT delegate, father of two grown children, Isabelle is hardly optimistic. At 54, she “crosses her fingers that it lasts for me. After, I am realistic, I know that the factory, it will not hold, not very very a long time, one knows it very well . Pascal understands it – “there are some who doubt” – but wants to believe it. “It's still twice as big as La Roche. There is work, there is demand. »

The RCC, “an evil for a good”

Elected union CFDT since November 2014, Gladys, if she recognizes that the competitiveness project, "it's scary", prefers to see the glass half full. “There is an RCC, but in the end it's a blessing in disguise. We have to go through this to be able to sustain the company, because we are going to modernize it. So inevitably, there are positions that will disappear, but there are positions that will also be created. There will be evolution. »

The 40-year-old sees it, an RCC makes it possible to change your life, in part thanks to the check that accompanies it. One of her colleagues from the EFS has just, at the age of 50, taken over a bar-grocery store. Another in repair has, for good, started as a beekeeper. “Today, we are in an atmosphere where people, they will perhaps spend ten years in a company or fifteen or twenty and suddenly, at 40, change completely. »

Like Gladys, Rémi sees the competitiveness project as an opportunity. For the executive, “it's job gains, it's not staff gains. This modernization of the site will make it possible to gain, certainly in performance, but also in productivity, in ergonomics, because the positions where we make the most gains are positions that are very repetitive, where you find MSDs [troubles musculoskeletal] arm – shoulder”.

Faced with globalization and its consequences, particularly on employment, the man is not naive, but believes in a future. "I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I just tell myself that, today, it's either we fight against all odds on this competition and the risk is that we lose since we don't have the same weapons, or we fight on something else , we're arguing something else and I think that's the direction we're going. »

“They will have to support me until the end”

Each understanding these questions in their own way, Isabelle, Gladys, Pascal, Rémi and Sébastien all intend to continue the adventure as much as possible. “They will have to support me until the end”, assures the first. Doing a job that "does not displease her", she intends to end up as a cutter. “If I had been younger, I might have wanted to do something else. You can always evolve, there are plenty of positions at Michelin. »

If anyone knows that, it's Rémi. Manufacturing agent, then maintenance worker, team leader, industrial organizer, unit manager, then in central maintenance and, finally, personnel manager, he lives in the present moment. "And then we'll see tomorrow. If there are other opportunities that arise, with an experience, a challenge that interests me, of course I will go,” says the one who is “not afraid to go into the unknown”.

While Sébastien thinks above all about healing, while Pascal is considering a day job and responsibilities, Gladys says she loves her job, but is not opposed to an evolution, but always to Michelin. “I will stay at Michelin until I retire, if we stay open, which I hope, of course. If Michelin really has to close one day for x reasons, at least I will have been devoted to my business until the end. »