Chrysler Signs Accord With NAACP on Hiring Practices

Chrysler Corp. on Tuesday signed an agreement with the NAACP to double the number of minorities and women in executive management positions to 20% of its work force within five years.

Chrysler became the 62nd company and the last of the Big Three auto makers to join the NAACP “fair share” program, but NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks said Chrysler already was doing many of the things the program calls for.

“The Big Three automobile companies have been the most consistent supporters of the black community,” said Hooks.

The commitment was signed by Hooks and Chrysler Chairman Lee A. Iacocca as part of the annual meeting here of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

Generally, companies joining the fair share program make commitments to expand access of blacks to entry- and mid-level jobs, increase the number of black-owned suppliers and appoint black directors.

Anthony St. John, chief of the No. 3 auto maker’s personnel operations, said the company hopes to maintain its 23% level of minority hourly workers during the next five years.

Earlier Tuesday, Detroit’s Mayor Coleman Young told delegates on the third day of the conference that blacks who want to help the inner cities should stop spending money with retailers that move to the suburbs.

Stores have little reason to stay in the city “when black people in too large numbers too easily follow them . . . begging them to take their money,” Young said. “We have to learn to spend our money with our own, and in our own city.”

Such economic strategies are needed when the rights of women as well as blacks and other minorities are newly threatened, Young said.

“We now face a situation where the Supreme Court is attempting to reverse affirmative action,” the mayor said. “I think we need a mighty coalition of protest in America.”

Quoting Benjamin Franklin’s statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence that “we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” Young added: “The hangman is out there, and the noose is ready. Welcome to Detroit, where the struggle is a daily affair.”

Vice President Dan Quayle is scheduled to address the convention today.