March 29, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The latest
reading of the Conference Board's Help Wanted Advertising
Index, a rough gauge of prospects for job hunters, points to
a job market on the brink of recovery.
The Index, which measures the number of jobs on offer
nation-wide climbed 3 points, to reach 51, from the
previous month’s reading of 47. Despite the climb, the
index remains at its lowest level in 40 years. A year ago,
the index was at 72.
Of the nine geographical regions followed by the
Conference Board, help-wanted advertising inched up in:
March 28, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Hit in recent
months with a handful of employee discrimination claims, Ford
Motor Co. has settled one of the diversity lawsuits that
charged it systematically discriminated against white
males.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, according to
a Reuters news report.
The plaintiff was John Kovacs, a white former Ford
Credit division manager. In his suit, filed last June in
Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, Kovacs, 36, claimed
he had been discriminated against since starting with Ford
in 1993 (see
Managers Sue Ford For
Reverse Discrimination
).
Although Ford has defended its personnel policies, court
documents showed that Ford had a formal policy of
increasing its minority and female population, while
trimming the number of white males, Reuters said.
Kovacs alleged that he was passed over repeatedly for
promotion because of Ford’s diversity initiative. And he
claims he was demoted — from a human resources position at
Ford Credit to a job as library archivist — in a revenge
move for his discrimination complaints.
No Admission
None of the recent discrimination cases against Ford has
gone to trial, and a Michigan judge earlier this month
approved a multimillion-dollar settlement of a lawsuit
accusing Ford of bias against older workers. (See
Judge OKs $10.5 M Ford
Settlement
)
In settling the cases, the company admitted no
wrongdoing, but Ford has managed to keep some unsavory
allegations out of the public spotlight by settling out of
court.
Kovacs quoted former Chief Executive Officer Jacques
Nasser as bluntly explaining in a videotaped address to top
executives at a training seminar that diversity was
necessary so that Ford’s work force would better reflect
its customer base. “I do not like the sea of white faces in
the audience,” Nasser was quoted as saying.
Separately, Kovacs’s complaint quotes Nasser as saying
at a Ford human resources conference: “We have too many
middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon males, and that needs to
change.”