Blacks hit hard as automaker jobs go south
By Louis Aguilar Detroit News
Detroit - As American auto factory jobs have steadily moved south into nonunion plants over the past 25 years, African-Americans have been hit hardest by the loss.
Whites and Latinos also are losing ground, but the decline in steady, high-paying union work is far greater among blacks, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank.
"Union jobs in auto (plants) have been one of the most important sources of well-paid employment for African-Americans since World War II," said John Schmitt, one of two economists behind the study.
The employment shift has contributed to a reduction in the median weekly wages of all black workers by 5 percent between 2000 and 2004, to $523 a week.
In 1979, 2.1 percent of all African-American workers in the United States were helping assemble cars and trucks. At the time, there was just one nonunion auto plant operated by a foreign automaker in the United States.
By 2004, when there were 27 such plants in 11 states, the share of black workers assembling vehicles had fallen by more than one-third to 1.3 percent, according to the study. That equates to a loss of about 120,000 jobs, given the current size of the workforce.
By contrast, the percentage of the white workforce laboring in auto assembly plants fell 0.2 percentage points, from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. The share of Hispanic workers dropped by 0.2 points, to 0.6 percent.
The pending layoffs of 60,000 autoworkers by Ford and General Motors could widen that gap, Schmitt said.
"The upcoming layoffs (by Ford and General Motors) will have a disproportionate effect on African-American workers, as it has for quite some time," Schmitt said.
The majority of auto plants shuttered during the past two decades were run by Detroit-based automakers - GM, Ford and Chrysler, now a unit of DaimlerChrysler. Most of the facilities closed were in urban areas with large black populations, including Detroit, Pontiac and Flint in Michigan, and St. Louis.
And most of the workers were represented by the United Auto Workers union.
Today, the 28 plants run by foreign automakers are mostly in rural areas, mainly in Southern states, and none is represented by the UAW, despite numerous attempts by the union to establish a foothold in the facilities. [Let it sink in - the UAW is not organized a single one of out of 28 factories. This utter bankruptcy! SR]
In 1982, Honda began making Accords at a plant in Marysville, Ohio, where less than 5 percent of the population is black. At one point, a group of blacks sued Honda in a bid to force the automaker to hire more blacks.
Toyota is preparing to open an $800 million plant in San Antonio, where blacks represent 7 percent of the population.
Foreign automakers say their workforces reflect the population where their plants are based, and many with plants in Alabama, often dubbed Detroit South, say that means plants have a large black workforce.
Hyundai recently opened a facility in Montgomery, Ala., and at least 50 percent of the workers are black, said Hyundai spokesman Kerry Christopher. At least 30 percent of workers are black at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and a Honda facility in Lincoln, Ala.
At Nissan's plant in Canton, Miss., the work force is 30 percent black, in line with the area's demographics.
Honda said the percentage of black workers at its six facilities in west-central Ohio far exceeds the local black population in surrounding counties, where less than 8 percent of the population is black, spokesman Ed Miller said. Toyota said its eight U.S. manufacturing plants reflect the makeup of local communities, where the population is often less than 10 percent black.
Overall, the number of U.S. workers building vehicles and auto parts has held steady at about 1 million for the past 15 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but more than 25 percent of U.S. autoworkers are now employed by foreign automakers.
At the same time, more than one-third of Michigan autoworkers have lost their jobs.
"I don't need a study to know that black autoworkers have taken it on the chin more than other communities," said Sam Kirkland, who works at GM's Pontiac service parts operation facility. He also is shop chair for UAW Local 653 and is active in supporting the link between blacks and unions.
"You could walk into a plant and meet black families and you talked to so many proud parents who could afford to send their kids to college," said Kirkland, a 24-year veteran of GM. "It's less so the case now. Unions have been so pivotal in helping build a black middle-class and, as you can see, without that representation, we're losing ground.
"That's the larger tragedy; the black community is losing that path and it's not being replaced."
The intersection of civil rights and union membership is deep-seated in the black community. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached as early as 1958 that the path to black economic equality was through unions.
But blacks are quickly dropping out of unions, and the trend is accelerating. Since 2000, the number of blacks in all unions has fallen by 14.4 percent, while white membership has dropped 5.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Blacks represent about 15 percent of all union members.
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_3526974
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