ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9703280036
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON THE ROANOKE TIMES|
More than a passing management fad, workforce diversity is a fundamental at some of the nation's largest companies. It is credited with making some of them more profitable.
"The best way to address diversity is to read the bottom line. How does this make us a better company?," asked Victor Cardwell, a black lawyer with Woods, Rogers & Hazlegrove in Roanoke.
He advises companies on employment issues, adding "Roanoke Valley employers are attuned to the issue."
According to one national expert, many companies are uneasy about supporting diversity programs for business reasons. "They think it should only be for 'societal good.' I think that's secondary," said Patricia Digh, former vice president of international and diversity programs at the Society for Human Resource Management, an Alexandria trade group for personnel directors.
Consider the case of Avon Products for insight into why corporate America is embracing diversity programs. The New York seller of cosmetics and related beauty products is drawing higher sales from the growing population of Asian women in the United States since it hired more Asian salespeople to demonstrate makeup, said Digh, now a diversity consultant.
In another example, The Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas is one preferred destination for disabled people. The reason: It hired and then consulted a group of wheelchair users on how the hotel could become more friendly to the disabled.
Nonstandard workers, Digh said, are one of the new "secret tools" of American business.
For the story's flipside, consider the case of Texaco. The worldwide petroleum company, based in White Plains, N.Y., four months ago agreed to pay the largest race discrimination settlement in the nation's history. Company officials admitted a racism problem after release of a taped conversation among executives. The $176 million judgment will pay for back wages and future raises for black employees and to set up a task force on diversity training and sensitivity. It is under a boycott and saw its stock price fall.
Texaco Chairman Peter Bijur, who apologized publicly but denied knowledge of any bias problem before the tapes were played, told Black Entertainment Television: "We're going to change."
The list of companies recently embroiled in discrimination charges is long. Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., agreed to pay $13 million in one of the nation's biggest age discrimination settlements. Chevron Corp. of San Francisco agreed to a proposed settlement under which it would pay $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleges it discriminated against hundreds of women in pay, promotions and assignments.
And a federal judge said he will oversee employment practices at Circuit City Stores for five years, after a jury found the home electronics retailer denied promotions to blacks at its Richmond headquarters. The case is under appeal.
Chicago-based R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., the company building a book factory in Roanoke County, recently was accused in a lawsuit of laying off hundreds of black workers while giving less-experienced white employees jobs at other plants.
Just last week, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused United Parcel Service in San Francisco of discrimination against the disabled for allegedly denying truck driving jobs to people with use of only one eye who nonetheless were qualified drivers. And, Norfolk Southern Corp. faces trial May 12 in Birmingham, Ala., in a class-action lawsuit by hundreds of its black employees. The workers are charging discrimination in hiring and promotions.
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