ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210070
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: C. DENNIS CAUSEY
YOU PUBLISHED on May 1 an editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Constitution that satirized current issues surrounding Mitsubishi Motors. As are your readers, I'm concerned with recent press reports about sexual harassment at Mitsubishi Motors. But we at Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics America Inc. take exception to the cartoon.
It paints a picture that leads to incorrect assumptions - namely, that all companies with the name Mitsubishi are owned and managed by the same people, and are infected by the same problem. This type of cartoon unfairly taints the 1,600 Americans who work at our company and have no connection whatsoever with Mitsubishi Motors.
Please understand that MCEA and its affiliates in the United States, Japan and worldwide are unrelated to Mitsubishi Motors. There's no management or organizational affiliation between our companies and Mitsubishi Motors. We share only the Mitsubishi name in common. The MCEA group of companies and the Mitsubishi Motors group are separate companies, each separately traded on the Tokyo Stock Market, and each independently managed.
MCEA has been doing business in the United States for 23 years. We have four major locations in the United States: one factory in Braselton, Ga., and one in Santa Ana, Calif.; our new engineering center in Costa Mesa, Calif.; and corporate headquarters in Norcross, Ga.
MCEA and its affiliates have a strong and active commitment to equal-opportunity employment, non-discrimination in the work place, and a foundation of unwavering intolerance of any type of harassment. We spend time regularly training all our managers and supervisors regarding proper work-place behavior. It should be of interest that of the human-resource managers at the facilities noted above, three out of four are women. We strictly enforce antidiscrimination and harassment rules. The bottom line is that our commitment to our employees is our primary focus.
It is to be hoped your readers can see why we're concerned with the cartoon's depiction of the name Mitsubishi. In the future, we request that all references be spelled out in such a way that readers know who is being written about, i.e., with the appropriate company name.
C. Dennis Causey is Account Executive/Regional Manager for Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics America Inc.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB