International Business : Ford, Union to Meet Over Altered Photo

Ford Motor Co. was scrambling Wednesday to deal with negative publicity over its use of a promotional photograph in which four black assembly-line workers had been given white faces.

Ford said it agreed to meet union officials to discuss the use of the doctored photo on a brochure for its credit arm, in what it called “an administrative error.”

“We will be arranging a meeting, but no date has been fixed,” a Ford spokesman said.

The company said there was no racial motive in altering the picture, and it agreed to pay $2,300 in compensation to each of the workers involved.

But the workers’ union said it was not satisfied.

The photograph, showing a line of about 30 Ford workers, was taken in 1991 as part of an advertising campaign. Black faces were made white for the company’s publicity campaign in Poland because, Ford said, the original photograph “did not portray the ethnic mix in Poland.”

The photograph was reused this year on new posters and publicity brochures for Ford Motor Credit Co. that were displayed in Ford dealerships in Britain.

Della DiPietro, a Ford Credit spokeswoman in Dearborn, Mich., said the finance unit did not realize the photo had been altered until it was too late.

“There was no racial intent here,” DiPietro said. “Clearly, it’s something for which we have a great deal of embarrassment, and we apologize.”

The brochures and posters were not distributed outside of Britain, she said, and they have all been recalled.

The incident was raised in British Parliament on Wednesday, however. One politician said Ford had rewritten its founder’s comment that customers could buy his Model T in any color “as long as it’s black.”

“Now it would appear that Ford’s new mission statement is that you can have any color worker you want at Ford, providing he’s white,” the Labor Party’s Tony Banks said.