Mitsubishi Plant Split on How to Define Writing on the Wall

The tile-lined walls of the men’s bathrooms inside Mitsubishi Motors Corp.’s cavernous auto plant are pristine these days, scrubbed and sanded almost daily by cleaning crews.

Not long ago, those same walls were used as sounding boards for the private impulses of Mitsubishi workers--blank slates darkened day after day with furtive messages left by men seething with racial and sexual anger.

Female and black workers, identified by name, were regularly singled out for epithets and obscenities. Crudely drawn nudes of female co-workers, some stretching 3 feet tall, blossomed on bathroom stalls. Graphic descriptions of sex acts, festooned with cartoon phalli and the phone numbers of women who worked in the plant, ran on like excerpts from pornographic novels. The scrawls sometimes remained for weeks before they were sanded off, only to sprout again, say veteran Mitsubishi workers.

“If you wanted to know what was really on people’s minds, all you had to do was look at the walls,” said Jeff Woodard, a Mitsubishi employee who is also a union civil rights representative.

Outsiders have had few glimpses of the Mitsubishi plant’s bathroom graffiti or the alleged incidents of harassment that female workers and federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission officials contend grew by the hundreds, triggering the most widespread investigation of sexual harassment in an American workplace.

What happened over the past eight years within the sprawling complex that Mitsubishi built near the twin communities of Normal and Bloomington is as hard to get at as the scrawls that once appeared in the plant’s lavatories. The allegations, which have spawned several private lawsuits and a recent massive class-action filing by the EEOC against Mitsubishi, pit workers against each other and the plant’s management in convoluted tales that date back years.

The government allegations are starkly drawn: Low-level supervisors threatening retaliation against women who refused to perform oral sex. Scores of incidents in which production line workers grabbed female colleagues’ breasts, buttocks and genitals.

Frat Party Atmosphere

Several women who work in the plant elaborated on the government’s skeletal details in interviews with The Times, describing some work areas that operated like fraternity parties. In one assembly section, several Mitsubishi workers allege, workers regularly hooted like monkeys and hoisted rating scorecards whenever young women passed by their lines. Other women on the line, workers say, were regularly subjected to blasts from air guns normally used to tighten screws in metal.

Yet the contested nature of the EEOC’s case and the legal secrecy that surrounds it--neither factory officials nor female plaintiffs will discuss the lawsuits--have roused widespread suspicion against the government in the towns where Mitsubishi has long been hailed as a generous employer.

Despite the fact that some of the community’s own daughters and wives helped launch the federal probe, residents and town leaders have rallied to Mitsubishi’s corner. Some, like Bloomington Mayor Jesse Smart, joined 2,000 workers on a recent march against regional EEOC offices in Chicago. Others have deluged local newspapers and political leaders with pro-company mailings.

Many echo the plaint of Gary Shultz, the Mitsubishi plant’s general counsel and spokesman, who wonders aloud how allegations of widespread sexual harassment could have been kept secret from the surrounding community for eight years. “It’s obvious,” Shultz scoffed, answering his own question. “It’s not pervasive.”

Skeptical Residents

If sexual harassment was rampant at the plant, many Normal and Bloomington residents reason, they would have known. Of the 4,000 workers at the plant, 700 of whom are women, more than half live in surrounding McClean County.

“The only complaints I ever heard was that they were making too much overtime and they didn’t have any time to themselves,” said Wayne Johnson, who serves dozens of arriving auto workers each morning at Sooooooooo Convenient, a store a mile from the plant.

The instinctive rush to support Mitsubishi might be expected in a community that has been well-served for its loyalty. Although the area has been bolstered financially by the presence of Illinois State University and national and regional headquarters for State Farm Insurance Co., Mitsubishi’s eight-year existence just west of the two towns has produced more than a stable flow of well-paying jobs.

Along College Road, not far from where the plant and its rows of tall smokestacks rear up from the earth like a whitewashed battleship, an entire industrial park has sprung up, filled with factories supplying Mitsubishi with paint, parts and equipment essential for production-line work.

And years of donations to local schools, libraries and charities have lent Mitsubishi an image as community provider. The plant has funded foreign exchanges of college professors and high school students, contributed to medical charities and sent used test cars to be disassembled by area vocational schools.

“We think the company’s been unjustly accused,” said Normal Mayor Kent Karraker, who politely declined a request by Mitsubishi officials that he join in the anti-EEOC march--but left no doubt where his loyalties lie. “We’ve never had a single complaint, formal or otherwise. Don’t you think word would have gotten out if it was that bad?”

A vocal chorus of male and female auto workers who support the EEOC investigation counter that many at the plant failed to talk openly about problems because they feared losing their jobs--and that harassment would worsen. Mitsubishi workers who offer up details of sexual and racial harassment insist that some victims were reluctant to go public because they were embarrassed by the nature of their complaints--and were forced to go to private lawyers and government investigators with their stories only when it became clear the company was not taking the complaints seriously.

Patricia Benassi, a lawyer representing 29 women in a private lawsuit against Mitsubishi, said that female employees often were cowed by the manner in which company managers responded to their complaints.

“What would happen is that when women would complain, managers would go down to the floor and announce publicly to their co-workers that there had been a complaint and then they would name the complainer,” Benassi said. “So, of course, the harassers would only harass them further.”

Mitsubishi spokesman Shultz declined to discuss specifics of charges against the company but said it has always responded quickly and toughly to any harassment cases.

Within the plant, workers’ knowledge about incidents of harassment depends on their years of service and the shops where they have worked, Mitsubishi workers say. “Things were at their worst two to three years ago” when the first private lawsuits were filed and the EEOC investigation began, said George Walker, a Mitsubishi employee who has filed his own lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in hiring practices. “The newer workers have no idea how bad it was.”

The ‘Zoo’

And while some smaller departments within the plant, such as the factory’s quality-control inspection team, have been known as havens from blatant harassment, other shops were dreaded assignments for some women.

Perhaps the most feared was the final assembly area, known as the “zoo,” where young women were regularly taunted and subjected to the air gun blasts, some workers say. Girlie calendars were on open display and men drank from cups decorated with pictures of naked women. Shovels, forklifts, car chassis covers and other equipment were covered and scratched with lewd comments, and insults regularly circulated through the area.

“Young women got it the worst,” said one female worker who declined to be named out of fear of retaliation. “There’s nothing more humiliating I can think of than to see 60 guys making monkey noises when a woman walks past them. It was awful.”

Workers who support the factory tell a different story. Although many acknowledge that some incidents of harassment took place, they say the episodes were hardly pervasive--and offenders were swiftly disciplined. Contrary to EEOC officials who have said that as many as 500 separate allegations were actionable, Shultz said Mitsubishi employee relations officers count only 89 complaints in eight years--and 10 male workers fired for harassment.

Kathleen McLouth, a worker who commutes 140 miles to the plant each day to deliver parts to the line, said she was harassed several years ago by a manager who “talked to me in a menacing way.” But when McLouth went to United Auto Workers representatives and to company supervisors to complain, the problem was dealt with promptly, she said.

“My boss gave me his guarantee that would never happen again--and it hasn’t,” McLouth said.

Unease at Union

Local UAW leaders declined to comment on the case, but low-level representatives said the union’s response to harassment allegations was hampered by the lack of a clear response policy often found at other auto factories. And local UAW officials were reluctant to involve themselves in volatile cases in which both parties belonged to the union.

“It’s uncomfortable for the union,” said Jeff Woodard, who sits on the UAW’s civil rights committee. “Either way, they get burned.”

Some female workers who support the company say many of those who have filed lawsuits were super-sensitive to factory life and, in some cases, slackers trying to take advantage of Mitsubishi.

“People here work elbow to elbow, and sure, you’re going to get some spicy talk,” said Judy Scurlock, who works in the plant’s quality-control department. “If they touch you, it’s one thing. But if a woman can’t take a few words, what I say is, ‘Grow up.’ ”

Still, even in the three weeks that have passed since the EEOC’s filing, there have been disquieting incidents inside the plant, hinting that relations between male and female workers are not as unified as the protest march against the EEOC by 2,000 Mitsubishi employees suggested.

Two of the 29 female workers who filed the private lawsuit two years ago have been on temporary stress leave after one received death threats and the other grew fearful after hearing repeated slurs while working on the line.

Hours after the march against the EEOC, one of the plaintiffs, Terry Paz, found a note in her factory locker that read: “Die, bitch! You’ll be sorry.” Local police are investigating the incident and Shultz has said the company has sent out repeated warnings to employees not to harass any of the 18 workers who filed the suit and still work for Mitsubishi (11 other plaintiffs have left the company).

And union representative Woodard said that on a recent Saturday shift, not long after the EEOC suit was filed, he entered a bathroom stall and saw a few familiar scribbled lines of graffiti--but with a new hint of menace. “If some ---- is responsible for my losing my job, I’m going on a ---- hunt,” the message read.

By the next Monday, Woodard said, the threat was gone, erased by cleaning crews.

“The good news,” Woodard allowed, “is that they’re at least getting rid of it a lot faster.”