Firms Deny Bias : Japan Car Plants in U.S. Hire Few Blacks, Study Says

Japanese auto companies are locating most of their new American plants far from black population centers and are then hiring blacks at rates well below their representation in nearby areas, according to a new study.

Blacks are under-represented at virtually every Japanese “transplant” auto factory in the United States, according to a review of Japanese hiring patterns by University of Michigan researchers Robert Cole and Donald Deskins.

At the American assembly plants operated by Nissan, Honda and Mazda, and at 51 Japanese auto parts plants surveyed, the percentage of black employees was far below the percentage of blacks in the population within commuting distance of the factories, Cole and Deskins found.

By comparison, the study found that hiring at General Motors exceeded the percentage of blacks within commuting distance, but Deskins said most of that is due solely to hiring at a new GM plant in the city of Detroit.

Japanese company executives deny any racial bias in their decisions on where to locate their facilities or on whom to hire.

“We do not discriminate in our hiring at all,” said Roger Lambert, manager of corporate communications at Honda’s U.S. manufacturing complex in Marysville, Ohio.

“Nissan’s black work force is consistent with the availability in the local community,” added Bucky Kahl, director of human resources at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn., truck and car assembly plant.

Still, the Michigan findings, to be formally released in an article in the November issue of California Management Review, seem likely to help intensify the ongoing debate over Japanese racial attitudes, and over Japanese hiring practices in their rapidly expanding American operations.

A transpacific controversy over the issue flared up earlier this summer, after a series of incidents with racist overtones in Japan led to protests in this country by black leaders and to threats of a black boycott of Japanese goods. Many black political and business leaders in the United States now say they are convinced that Japanese corporations are trying to avoid offering significant opportunities to black workers and to black small businesses.

Could Buttress Charges

The hiring practices in the Japanese-American auto plants are an especially sensitive issue among black leaders. Auto plants in Detroit and other big cities traditionally provided a route to the middle class for inner city blacks that they couldn’t find in other industries. But now, many of the inner-city plants run by the Big Three domestic auto makers have closed, and the Japanese plants in rural areas are to a large degree their direct replacements.

The study by Cole and Deskins, whose findings were first disclosed in an auto industry trade journal, could buttress earlier federal charges of racial bias in Japanese hiring practices that followed a broad-based investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In March, Honda agreed to pay $6 million to 377 blacks and women denied jobs at the firm between 1983 and 1986 to settle discrimination charges brought by the federal agency. Toyota and Nissan have also been targets of the agency’s investigation, and in response, Toyota has agreed to increase minority hiring. Nissan is reportedly now negotiating a settlement with federal officials.

Cole and Deskins found that black employment at Honda’s Ohio complex, the largest Japanese auto manufacturing operation in the United States, represented just 2.8% of the work force.

Meanwhile, they reported that the percentage of blacks within a 26-mile radius, which Cole and Deskins defined as the commuting distance, was 10.5%.

At Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn., plant, black employment was 14%, while the commuting area’s population was 19.3%, the study said. At Mazda’s Flat Rock, Mich., assembly facility, blacks make up 14.1% of the work force, while 29% of the population in the surrounding area, which includes metropolitan Detroit, is black. And, at a group of 51 Japanese auto parts plants around the nation, black employment was 8.6%, compared to an average black population in the surrounding areas of 12.6%.

Figures Distorted

At General Motors, the study found that at assembly plants built since 1980, black employment was 25.4% of the total, while 16.6% of the population within commuting distance of those facilities was black.

But Deskins said those figures were distorted by one plant--GM’s Poletown assembly plant in the city of Detroit. The numbers were also skewed by GM’s union contract, which often requires the company to transfer workers from closed factories to new ones. If Poletown were removed, Deskins said, the GM figures would be comparable to those for the Japanese. Deskins said he believes that overall domestic auto industry’s record on black hiring may not be much better in recent years.

The statistics and conclusions in the Michigan study are already being challenged by the Japanese companies. “We don’t believe that those numbers are accurate,” said Honda’s Lambert.

Lambert said Honda only hires workers from a designated 16-county area in central Ohio, where the black population is much lower than 10.5%. He added that, even within the 26-mile zone designated by Cole and Deskins, the black population is below that level as well. He said the study must have included the entire city of Columbus, which is farther than 26 miles from the plant, in order to attain a larger black population base.

Yet, in the settlement of the federal charges against Honda, the company did agree to include black neighborhoods of Columbus in its official hiring area.

Questions Conclusions

Officials for the Japanese companies also deny that they tried to avoid black population centers when they located their plants. Although most Japanese plants are located in rural, Midwestern sites, far from cities with large concentrations of blacks, some are in urban areas. Mazda’s Michigan assembly plant, for instance, is right outside predominantly black Detroit.

“We don’t really feel that the conclusions are correct,” said Ron Hartwig, a spokesman for Mazda. “We obviously decided to locate in the greater Detroit area, to take advantage of the skilled workers in the area. And we have worked with over 20 Detroit-area community organizations, making sure the work force would be balanced.”

But Deskins argues that that race has to have been a factor in Japanese hiring practices. “The Japanese are very methodical, and they are very aware of the demographic conditions in different areas of the U.S.” Deskins said. “If you start to look at the locations of their plants, you see that the effect is that they have minimized the access by the black population. You’ll also find that their black employment is below the level for their areas. We’d be naive to say that race is not a variable in this.”