Working Life, Pink and Green
I've been listening to and reading the general condemnation of the US auto industry for building inferior cars. This comes up as context for "why the US car companies are failing."
They're not as fuel-efficient. They're not as advanced technologically. Basically, they're not as "green" as Japanese cars. All the cool folks who need cars are driving Priuses.
To use a phrase I generally despise, it's "politically incorrect" to have a domestic car.
And yet, I wonder about how this kind of choice affects women. Or, more bluntly, how little anyone thinks about how women are affected by that choice. How are workers, especially women workers, treated in US auto plants compared to those in Japan? What is the difference between Japanese-owned and American-owned auto plants even if both are in the US?
And will that continue? Because one of the rules for allowing a US auto company to get that much-maligned bailout is that work rules for domestic car companies must be "competitive" with those of transplant automakers (foreign-owned companies).
Unfortunately, sexism often provides a competitive advantage if you're in collusion with other employers, as is racism. Paying women less money, while they do work that is just as good, is always a popular moneysaver. Look at industries where wages are declining and you see more and more women in the ranks and even in the boardrooms.
And those workers who are in the most precarious position, newer workers, with a greater percentage of women and minorities, could get dumped on yet again with more two-tiered systems that favor workers with seniority, workers who were hired back when women and minorities couldn't even get those jobs. Legacy benefits for retirees affect both men and women, but eventually they go disproportionally to women, and they are on the chopping block as well.
It's the feminization of poverty all over again.
Japan is still behind the US in terms of sexual equality. And this problem does not only exist in plants in Japan. According to Time magazine, back in the 1990s, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America was sued over sexist conditions in its auto plant in Normal, Illinois. Apparently the Japanese corporate culture is even more sexist than American corporate culture. American managers were trained in Japan and, according to the suit, adopted the sexist Japanese management culture. From the Time article:
Are things better now? I hope they are, but information is hard to find. Maybe some readers know.
Interesting links I found when researching this post:
Union Gal, a blog by a woman union worker.
Emptywheel, a blog on Firedoglake that has been covering the auto company bailouts and union bashing.
They're not as fuel-efficient. They're not as advanced technologically. Basically, they're not as "green" as Japanese cars. All the cool folks who need cars are driving Priuses.
To use a phrase I generally despise, it's "politically incorrect" to have a domestic car.
And yet, I wonder about how this kind of choice affects women. Or, more bluntly, how little anyone thinks about how women are affected by that choice. How are workers, especially women workers, treated in US auto plants compared to those in Japan? What is the difference between Japanese-owned and American-owned auto plants even if both are in the US?
And will that continue? Because one of the rules for allowing a US auto company to get that much-maligned bailout is that work rules for domestic car companies must be "competitive" with those of transplant automakers (foreign-owned companies).
Unfortunately, sexism often provides a competitive advantage if you're in collusion with other employers, as is racism. Paying women less money, while they do work that is just as good, is always a popular moneysaver. Look at industries where wages are declining and you see more and more women in the ranks and even in the boardrooms.
And those workers who are in the most precarious position, newer workers, with a greater percentage of women and minorities, could get dumped on yet again with more two-tiered systems that favor workers with seniority, workers who were hired back when women and minorities couldn't even get those jobs. Legacy benefits for retirees affect both men and women, but eventually they go disproportionally to women, and they are on the chopping block as well.
It's the feminization of poverty all over again.
Japan is still behind the US in terms of sexual equality. And this problem does not only exist in plants in Japan. According to Time magazine, back in the 1990s, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America was sued over sexist conditions in its auto plant in Normal, Illinois. Apparently the Japanese corporate culture is even more sexist than American corporate culture. American managers were trained in Japan and, according to the suit, adopted the sexist Japanese management culture. From the Time article:
As early as 1992, female employees at Mitsubishi began to complain of sexual misbehavior on the factory floor. They reported obscene, crude sketches of genital organs and sex acts, and names of female workers scratched into unpainted car bodies moving along the assembly line. Women were called sluts, whores and bitches and subjected to groping, forced sex play and male flashing. Explicit sexual graffiti such as KILL THE SLUT MARY were scrawled on rest-area and bathroom walls. In a particularly egregious case, a worker put his air gun between a woman's legs and pulled the trigger. Declared a line supervisor: "I don't want any bitches on my line. Women don't belong in the plant."A scheduled visit by the EEOC to the plant indicated how seriously they took the complaints — the graffiti hadn't even been removed from the walls.
Are things better now? I hope they are, but information is hard to find. Maybe some readers know.
Interesting links I found when researching this post:
Union Gal, a blog by a woman union worker.
Emptywheel, a blog on Firedoglake that has been covering the auto company bailouts and union bashing.
I'm not sure that it has anything to do with 'political correctness'. Its more to do with the car companies not listening to the market in the past.
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Thanks for the comment, M-H. You're making me think!
You're right that it's based on a real difference between the foreign and domestic auto manufacturers in the US.
The thing is, US auto manufacturers are now making better cars. They're behind, but they are catching up.
It's almost a shame that oil prices went back down, because higher gas prices were making the need for higher-mileage vehicles from US carmakers more urgent. Now people are actually considering buying Hummers again!
(I say almost because many people who don't have access to public transportation were badly affected by the recent gas price increases. Not everyone has the resources to buy a new Prius, used Prius, or maybe even any vehicle. Apparently these days you need a credit score of 750 or better to get a car loan.)
My husband and I have a Honda and a Subuaru. So I'm not angry at people who buy Japanese cars. I'm just kind of worried about the American desire for more better faster cheaper all at once, and the cost that eventually must be borne by the worker.
Wages negotiated by the UAW are actually only a small part of transplant automakers' cost advantage. But if the UAW is forced to make concessions for US carmakers, those transplant carmakers can lower their compensation, too.
What better way to bust a union than with the government's help?
Anyway, I'm no apologist for poor design policies of the US automakers. It's just that there are some reasons the Japanese car makers can build more cheaply that aren't so pretty when you look at them closely. Every dollar we spend is a vote for a particular kind of business or industry.
It seems ironic that probably some people who think of themselves as at least part-time locavores, would never consider buying cheap goods from China from Wal*Mart, and have "buy local" bumper stickers are putting them on cars that had to go halfway around the world to get to their driveways.
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The issue of tiered pay is not something the UAW or any of the unions want to agree to, but they have been forced to do so. Take the grovery stores. Wal-Mart drives down wages for service employees. The same employees who get into a grocery store like Giant, Giant Eagle, Safeway and others now must come in at a lower tier. For these posts, it's not seniority over new folks, it's all about the pay offered at Wal-Mart and the need for the grocery stores to stay competitive.
It's the same story with the UAW. Line workers don't make $70+ an hour. You have to add in retired workers medical and pension to get to that number. New hires, due to tiered employment, now make the same as that of Toyota or Honda in the local employment markets.
And thanks for the link. There are actually 5 writers on Uniongal. Both in and out of the labor movement. I started the site to ensure that working women had a voice about issues that are important to us and our families. It's still an area where it feels like we are way behind the curve.
BTW, nice site.
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Thank you, bendygirl, for the clarification on tiered pay.
I remember discussing this with a grocery checker at a Giant; she was saying she had to be constantly on her manager to about scheduling. She was in a higher tier, and the management would try to schedule lower-tier employees in such a way as to minimize higher-tier employees' shifts and overtime.
I have read in multiple places about the bogus $70/hr UAW worker figure. To make the equivalent for office workers you'd have to include overhead for them as well, but of course that's "too complicated" and the perception of auto workers as overpaid goldbrickers is already widespread.
Thanks for commenting, and thanks for the compliment on the site! I definitely like your blog and will follow it.
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