Nissan Agrees to Settle Federal Job Bias Charges : Carson-Based Arm of Japanese Car Firm Will Aid Minorities, Women

Nissan Motor Corp. has agreed to pay $605,000 and promote dozens of women, blacks, Latinos and older workers to end a 4 1/2-year federal investigation of employment discrimination by the Japanese car maker’s Carson-based sales and marketing organization.

The contents of a letter describing the agreement, which Nissan distributed to its employees, were obtained Thursday by The Times. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is scheduled to announce the settlement today in Washington.

The U.S. subsidiary, which has about 2,100 employees, all but a few in Carson, denied in the letter that it had engaged in any form of discrimination. Rather, it said, “we believe that the actions we are taking in this regard are the most direct and conclusive means for resolving the commission’s proceedings.”

The settlement does not involve a separate Nissan subsidiary that manufactures vehicles in Smyrna, Tenn. Nissan officials said they would have no comment until after the commission’s announcement.

Honda Settled Earlier

Nissan becomes the third Japanese auto maker in the past two years to settle federal discrimination charges. Since 1984, the commission has conducted a sweeping investigation of hiring and promotion practices at the U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese auto companies, most of which are headquartered in the Los Angeles area.

Last March, Honda of America agreed to pay $6 million and give jobs to 377 blacks and women denied employment at the company’s auto, motorcycle and engine plants in Ohio between 1983 and 1986.

The firm pledged to expand its recruitment area to include black neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio, which are outside the mostly white, 16-county region from which Honda had been hiring. It also agreed to promote additional blacks and women and tutor managers in U.S. anti-discrimination laws.

Toyota, whose U.S. subsidiary is headquartered in Torrance, reached an agreement with the commission a year earlier that required it to hire five minority workers and pay nearly $50,000 in back wages.

Not only Japanese auto makers have faced charges of discrimination, however. Just this week, General Motors announced it had agreed to settle a six-year legal wrangle with 10,000 black salaried workers in the Midwest.

Their lawsuit charged that blacks in GM’s white-collar ranks persistently were denied raises and promotions. GM did not admit the allegations but agreed to monitor its personnel practices and redress any imbalances that emerged in the treatment of blacks and whites.

Older Workers Benefit

In meetings Thursday at Nissan’s Carson headquarters, managers were told that the EEOC investigation was prompted by complaints of age discrimination in an early retirement program along with concerns over the treatment of minorities and women, one manager said.

“This agreement is designed to foster greater opportunities for the hiring and promotion of persons 40 years of age or older and increase opportunities for the employment of women, blacks and Hispanics in the company’s regional offices,” said the company’s letter.

Among the steps outlined in the letter:

- Nissan will pay a total of $605,600 to older workers who were denied promotions, to women and minorities who applied for management-level jobs and were not hired by the company, and to a group of older workers who participated in the early retirement program.

- Over a three-year period, the company will promote 68 women, blacks, Latinos and people over 40 into management jobs.

- Nissan will recruit new employees for management posts from a list of 400 women, minorities and older workers who were denied jobs between June, 1984, and December, 1987.

- To open new promotion opportunities for all workers, the company will post all job openings for managers and management trainees. Nissan also abandoned its policy of requiring a college degree as a prerequisite for most management posts.

- The company will require all its managers to attend classes on avoiding discrimination in hiring and promotion. The first class was held last weekend.

Nissan also designated an executive to administer the new programs.

“They are very, very serious about this,” said one Nissan manager who asked not to be identified. “The training is excellent and extremely serious, and the company appears to be 100% committed to it.”

Japanese car makers have been dogged by criticism of their personnel practices as their presence in the United States has swelled in the past few years.

Study Disputes Claim

Academic critics and minority group leaders have charged that the Japanese auto makers located their manufacturing plants mainly in rural, Midwestern communities in part because those areas had small minority populations. The companies have firmly denied that allegation.

Nonetheless, one study published last fall found not only that Nissan, Honda and Mazda plants were built in communities with few minority residents but that the plants were hiring blacks in proportions far below their presence in the communities.

The Japanese car makers also have been criticized for failing to offer dealerships to blacks, Asians and Latinos. They have denied that charge as well.

Experts say the ethnic homogeneity of Japan and a cultural norm that tends still to restrict women to low-level jobs contribute to Japanese companies’ difficulties managing the far more diverse American work force. The difficulties, of course, hardly are reserved to Japanese-owned firms.