GM Case on Job Bias

GM 1983 Discrimination suit

G.M. And Racial Discrimination

The civil rights movement in the United States began slowly. Changing centuries of discriminatory practices across an entire country was not a task that was without opposition, and ignorance on the part of the average citizen. However, when that ignorance was institutionalized within businesses, the wheels of justice needed a significant push in order to begin to afford black American access to the same opportunities which Caucasian-Americans enjoyed. Toward this end, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission actively sought out target candidates which would have the largest impact on moving the civil rights agenda forward.

In 1973, a suit filed against the worlds largest automaker, General Motors, the EEOC alleged that the corporation actively discriminated against black, Hispanic and women workers. At the time of the suit's filing, the company had 6.4% of its journeymen (skilled labor) positions filled by minority workers. Under terms of the agreement, the company would seek to raise that quota to 10%. Regarding women, the company had a 20% labor force of hourly workers who were women. Under the agreement, the company said its new hiring programs would target a quota of 28% women.

This settlement was reach outside of a protracted legal battle in the courts. In light of the cultural direction of the decade, and the influence the EEOC was having in the marketplace securing a more balanced workplace for minorities, the Company chose to settle the suit. By following a proactive policy rather than an adversarial one, both the company and the EEOC were able to complete negotiations while remaining in a positive light in the marketplace of public opinion.

The negotiations reached a settlement which included significantly more benefits for women and minorities than promises of changed future hiring practices. GM agreed to pay over $42 million dollars in set aside grants, educational funding, and employee training programs in order to facilitate the process of equality within the company, and for the families of company employees. The monetary award included:

15 million in endowments and scholarships to colleges and technical schools, primarily to assist G.M. employees and their family members.

Affected class' members, women, blacks, and Hispanics, would receive preferential distribution of the funds.

8.9 million was set aside for training programs for over 250 women and minorities group members. The target of this program was to increase white collar job placement of minorities to 15% and women to 25%.

A million dollars was set aside for back pay, and to resolve outstanding individual complaints which were filed against the company and were still outstanding at the time of the settlement.

College endowment funds were also part of the settlement. General Motors agreed to support 28 different educational institutions with endowments of 250,000 each, to be paid over 5 years.

An additional $1 million would be given to a number of other universities.

A million would be given to a number of 2-year technical and vocational schools which were selected with the help of federal supervision.

1.25 million would be given in grants to support minority business enterprises.

2.2 million would be spent by the company to send some of its existing female black and Hispanic executives to universities where they could learn additional management skills.

A million would be spent on training and workshops for clerical employees in attempts to prepare them for better paying positions.

A million would be spent by the company to train women for foremen positions, and supervisors over manufacturing operations.

Another $2 million would be spent training people for jobs that involved technical skills and craftsmanship.

A million would be spent on educational initiatives to train employees in mathematics skills so that they could become eligible for apprenticeship programs.

Finally, the company committed to spending $1.2 million to recruit women, Hispanic and black Americans into the skilled trades.

According to the Legal Information Institute, a civil right is:

civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, assembly, the right to vote, freedom from involuntary servitude, and the right to equality in public places. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. Statutes have been enacted to prevent discrimination based on a person's race, sex, and religion, and age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, and national origin." (Legal Information Institute, online)

GM's generous response to the case was a direct confirmation of President Lyndon Johnson's desires for the Civil Rights legislation which was signed into law in 1964. The president did not believe that civil rights legislation alone would correct decades of discriminatory practices. In a speech to the graduating class at Howard University, President Johnson described the concept underlying affirmative action by asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair... This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity -- not just legal equity but human ability -- not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result." (infoplease.com, online)

Commenting on the terms of the GM agreement, spokesman for the UAW Peter Laarman echoed President Johnson's sentiments. The company did not see this settlement as reparations for actions which the company had deliberately taken that was discriminatory. Although terms of the agreement were that over 700 standing civil rights infringements would be corrected by the agreement, Laarman called the settlement "more prospective then retrospective" (NY Times, 1983) The company looked ahead to the future in which minority and women employees would be treated more fairly, and empowered to take advantage of the same opportunities which were available to other workers.

The Players monumental legal milestone such as the GM settlement has many key stakeholders involved in the process. The settlement was pursued for over 10 years. In order to fully understand the impact of the event, the key stakeholders, and their objectives must also be understood.

Civil Rights Legislation

Because the injustices of discrimination did not end with the passage of laws, organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) were created. The NAACP was one of the most significant of these organizations, and was led by chief legislator Thurgood Marshall. During his years spent with the NAACP, Thurgood developed a unique strategy to combat racial segregation throughout the United States. Without Thurgood breaking new legal ground, the Civil Rights Movement would not have gotten off the ground with the power and unified force with which is was eventually able to direct in the direction of General Motors. Marshall believed that the only way for change to occur was by altering the laws, and Thurgood Marshal was the first Civil Rights leader willing to use the law as means of change.

The early NAACP legal work followed the pattern of organized litigation in order to facilitate specific social ends. In order to initiate the civil rights movement, Marshall pushed ahead with a Court challenge to segregated university education. Marshall complained to Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, that "we have the lawyers ready but do not have the cases." So Marshall's forces repeatedly went out looking for "a good place to bring a lawsuit," "locate a plaintiff," and an opportunity to "develop a case." (Tushnet, 1994) In essence, Marshall bypassed the legislature which was unwilling to act on the issue of civil rights at the time. Marshall and the NAACP set the precedent of judicial lawmaking. Rather than wait cases to come to him, he pursued court actions "where the apple is ripe." (Tushnet, 1994)

Clarence Thomas and the EEOC

This tactic was established as a means of bypassing the legislature in an era which the legislatures refused to address the issue of civil rights. At the time of the GM action, the legislature has finally come on board, but corporate America was still unwilling to change its patterns. Just as Clarence Thomas followed Thurgood Marshall into the Supreme Court in the 1990's, it was Thomas in 1983 who sat at the table with GM officials signing the details of this agreement. Under Thomas' leadership, the EEOC followed the same strategy of "going where the apple is ripe" in order to secure a significant victory for civil rights stakeholders.

Regarding Thomas' leadership of the EEOC, several Directors who worked under him have gone on the record regarding the positive changes Thomas brought about during his tenure.

Patricia Bivins in the New Orleans office spoke at length in an interview about Thomas after his appointment to the Supreme Court. Bivins said, "Clarence Thomas moved the agency from the dark ages. We were finally given appropriate resources, and Thomas pushed the agency into doing full investigations... This agency is in a better position today to enforce the law, and we are beginning to get some respect." (Dataline, online) Bivins credited the improvements to administrative, policy, and procedural changes in the EEOC to Thomas.

Another contemporary of Thomas' was Harriet Ehrlich who worked in the Houston EEOC office. Ehrlich echoed much Bivins' sentiment, and said. "Thomas professionalized this agency, and revolutionaries it. He upgraded systems, facilities, and training. Before Thomas, the agency had no computerized database or systems for tracking cases or seeing how old cases were or how fast they were moving... In a bureaucracy, it's incredibly important to track cases and move paper... every piece of paper represents a life. We weren't really an enforcement agency until Thomas. He did a superb job of training, teaching investigators how to get proper evidence, interviewing techniques, how to take an affidavit." (Dataline, Online.)

Thomas earned the reputation of a man who knew what steps needed to be taken in order to accomplish the goals set before him, and the 10 years goal of bringing a major corporation to the bargaining table was accomplished. The settlement was the largest civil rights 'reparations' payment in national history, and to this day, the EEOC cites as one of it's chief triumphs the statement that was made to the entire nation as GM executives signed the terms of the agreement. (eeoc.org, online) If a corporation as large as GM could be brought to the bargaining table, and encouraged to create such a large commitment to civil rights, then every company in the county needed to sit up and take notice.

General Motors - An easy target

According to the EEOC statements, and the over 700 civil rights complaints filed against GM, the corporation had "a pattern and practice of race and sex discrimination." In the automakers defense, GM had grown to its current size during a time when white males composed the majority of the educated workforce. As GM built and filled its plants, women were largely still stay at home mothers. Because of the long standing pattern of substandard educational opportunities for black Americans, the black population was largely unqualified for the positions offered in the plant. The largely white male GM population was not the product of design, but rather the result of decades of employment patterns in the modern workplace.

As the plant population aged, and increasing numbers of women and minorities entered the workforce, prejudice and bigotry became a less than subtle occurrence in the manufacturing facilities, and GM built a long standing reputation for racial tensions. The manufacturing plant population is a relatively closed society all to itself. Feelings which start in the shop tends to stay, and are passes along to other workers because of the longevity of an employee's term in the company.

Evidence of this tendency is ongoing within GM facilities even 20 years after the monumental judgment. A lawsuit filed last year in Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Court charges General Motors Corporation with aiding and abetting a Gannett-owned newspaper in New York to discriminate against one of their former Gannett reporters, Demetrius Patterson. The suit charges General Motors with willful and deliberate interference with Mr. Patterson's employment relationship, which ultimately led to his termination at Gannett. (Mazur, Morgan, Meyers & Kittel, 2002)

In another case filed in 2002, A class-action charged General Motors on behalf 50 employees of violating their civil rights by failing to create a safe work environment, free from racial harassment. The case seeks 7.4 billion dollars for civil-rights violations they say they and 450 others endured at a truck plant in Pontiac. In detail, the suit accuses GM of ignoring such incidents as a white employee dressed as a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon harassing black workers. The employees claim that nooses were hung over beams at black workers' work stations, and that supervisors used derogatory terms such as "nigger" and "Buckwheat," when referring to black employees. The suit alleges that GM has ignored or failed to satisfactorily address complaints from African-American, Mexican-American and native American workers at the plant. In its defense, GM responded that it has disciplined blue-collar and white-collar workers involved in the incidents. "We are disappointed that the parties have elected to file a lawsuit," said GM spokesman Tom Wickham." The allegation in the lawsuit that we have a hostile work environment is false. We have done a considerable amount in the plant to educate employees on harassment and discrimination in terms of what is expected of them. That also includes advising our supervisors on what is permissible behavior and inappropriate conduct," (Agence France Presse, 2002)

Clearly, there is a problem in the work environment if 20 years after the GM - EEOC agreement, and 40 years after civil rights legislation has been signed into law the company is still experiencing these types of allegations. While GM cannot be held responsible for the actions of each of its employees, the aggressive position of the legal activist is to pursue those with the deepest pockets. Hopefully GM., and other companies which tolerate this harassment to occur within its facilities, will take notice of the significant legal judgments which can be levied against them, and take whatever steps are necessary to police its workforce and provide opportunities for every worker to advance.