The Michelin File: Drive to empire

Michelin rubber plantation in Vietnam, circa 1930 | Photo from Francois Dennis Fieve’s website, History of French Rubber Plantations (http://belleindochine.free.fr/Caoutchouc.htm)

Seventh in a series of articles on the Nova Scotian elections by TONY SEED*

THE MEDIA DISCOURSE around Michelin promotes that the “average” salary at a Michelin factory in Nova Scotia is $49,000, a product of a “union-free environment.” This disinformation aims to hide the source of wealth, the exploitation of labour in America and France and the super-exploitation of plantation workers in Brazil and Indo-China. It conceals that it is Nova Scotian labour which contributed to creating the material base of modern productive capacity in the province, whose fruits are controlled by a predatory French multinational.