1942

Between 1918 and 1921, General de Gaulle spent time in Poland with the Polish army. In 1920, with a contingent of the French military, he supported Polish soldiers who were fighting for the independence of Poland against Russia. He received the Virtuti Military medal, the highest decoration bestowed by the Polish military. De Gaulle retained a fondness for Poland and its people from his stays in Poland. In 1942, while in London as the leader of the Free French Forces, he asked the sons of Marian Wielezynski, Ignacy and Leszek Wielezysnski, who were officers in the Polish army in exile, for information on the statutes of employee participation in Gazolina SA. Before the war, both sons had worked respectively in the commercial and legal departments of the company. 

In his own words, one of the principal beliefs of Marian Wielezynski was that: “If an agricultural worker can dream of obtaining his own land and his own farm, a factory worker cannot dream of owning the wonders of modern technology. However, he can and must think of becoming co-owner of the company in which he works.”  

Therefore, from the founding of Gazolina, Marian Wielezynski created a system where the workers could become owners of the company.  He showed himself to be a pioneer in the area of modern management and organization of enterprises combining capitalism and socialism. The description of that system can be found in more details in Leszek Wielezynski’s book on this website. Gazolina’s implementation of employee shareholding has been a subject of interest for many contemporary economists, sociologists and politicians.

In 1967, as President of France, General de Gaulle approved a law providing for employee participation in the capital of companies by obliging all firms over a certain size to distribute a small portion of their profits to their employees. By 1974, as a result of this measure, French employees received an additional  monthly average of 700 francs per person, equivalent to 3.2% of their salary.