Ford to Pay $3.8 Million in Hiring Suit

Ford Motor Co. will pay $3.8 million in a settlement with the Labor Department over charges of discrimination against women and minorities in hiring at seven of the auto maker’s plants, federal officials said Friday.

Ford has also agreed to hire 100 female and minority applicants who were turned down for entry-level assembly-line positions at the plants and will compensate other applicants for lost wages, as they are located.

Labor officials said the agreement ensures that Ford will hire more women and minorities at all of its facilities because the company agreed to employ them in proportion to the percentage who apply.

“It is significant that the company--on a corporate-wide basis-- will change its hiring analysis, which will open a pipeline of opportunity to women and minorities who have too long been excluded from good-paying jobs on the Ford assembly line,” Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said.

The settlement is the fifth-largest by a company with the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance, which oversees federal contractors to ensure they are complying with the government’s affirmative action and nondiscrimination rules, officials said. The department can cancel federal contracts with companies that fail to comply.

Ford did not admit to any discrimination in the settlement. The company said it wanted to avoid the costs and uncertainties of litigation.

In September, Ford reached an agreement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to pay $7.75 million to as many as 900 women to settle complaints that they were groped and subjected to crude comments and graffiti at two of the auto maker’s plants in the Chicago area.

That was the second-largest settlement by an auto maker over sexual harassment charges. A record $34-million settlement involving almost identical allegations against Mitsubishi Motors Manufacturing of America Inc. received final approval last June.

“We want to reestablish a good working relationship with the agency,” said Ford spokeswoman Della DiPietro. “We fully share the same goals regarding diversity in the work force.”

She said that prolonged litigation was not in the best interest of Ford employees, shareholders or consumers.

The plants involved in the discrimination settlement announced Friday are in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Virginia.

Ford’s parts distribution center in San Francisco and two other facilities in Indiana and Georgia were also under review, but no formal finding of discrimination was made regarding those locations. Nevertheless, Ford agreed to hire more veterans and disabled workers at the San Francisco center.

Herman said the agreement resolves charges of discriminatory hiring practices in the 1990s at the 10 Ford facilities. The consent decree covering the settlement goes into effect today, three days after being approved by an administrative law judge.

The largest Labor settlement involving allegations of discrimination by a federal contractor was $14 million paid by Harris Bank of Chicago in 1989.

Separately Friday, Ford said it will cut 1,500 jobs at Dagenham, its largest British plant, as it struggles to turn around its lagging European car business.

Saddled with excess capacity, the company may take further action after completing a review of its European operations, said Ford of Europe Chairman Nick Scheele.

Ford had widely signaled the move, with officials saying for several months that the company was studying cutting some of its surplus capacity in Europe--estimated at 25% to 30%.