Black Workers in Auto Plants Losing Ground

DETROIT — Since millions of African-Americans began leaving Southern farms for Northern factories nearly a century ago in what is still known as the Great Migration, the destinies of many of them have been entwined with the auto industry’s.Now, with Detroit reeling, many blacks find their economic well-being threatened.By last month, nearly 20,000 African-American auto workers had lost jobs, a 13.9 percent decline in employment, since the recession began last December, according to government jobs data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington research firm. That compares with a 4.4 percent decline for all workers in manufacturing.“African-Americans earn much higher wages in the auto industry than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be devastating,” said a report this month by the Economic Policy Institute.“The motor vehicle and parts industry, a sector of the economy that has been particularly welcoming to African-Americans, is becoming a shrinking island of prosperity,” the report said.Claudia Perkins, 55, who has worked in the automobile industry for 33 years and is now at G.M.’s assembly plant at Lake Orion, Mich., put it more bluntly. “If it wasn’t for the factory, the average black would not have been able to survive all these years, especially without an education,” she said.African-Americans occupy most rungs of the car production ladder, from plant workers to white-collar employees to auto suppliers and car dealers. Nelson White III, an industrial materials analyst at Ford Motor’s transmission plant in Livonia, Mich., said he was concerned that other African-Americans would not receive the opportunities he has.Mr. White started as an hourly worker in a Ford factory, attended college under a Ford program and made the leap to management in 1999. In May, he will graduate with a master’s degree in organizational leadership.“There’s a saying that when America catches a cold, African-Americans catch the flu,” said Mr. White. CONTINUE READING...