ASSEMBLY-LINE SEXISM?

By LEON JAROFF

The Eclipse, Galant and the new Spyder autos that roll off the line of the Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America Inc. plant in Normal, Illinois, some 140 miles southwest of Chicago, are virtually free of defects. They reflect a good combination of Japanese design, which stresses continuous improvement, and American assembly and engineering skills.

All the major defects, it seems, are walking around inside the plant. That's what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges in charges filed against Mitsubishi three weeks ago, in what may turn out to be the biggest federal sexual-harassment lawsuit in history. If the courts rule in favor of the EEOC, the total cost to Mitsubishi in compensatory and punitive damages could theoretically exceed $150 million. The company has also been hit with a class action on behalf of 29 women, which portrays the Mitsubishi plant as a misogynous mix of sexist Japanese management practice and American blue-collar, bully-boy machismo.

Mitsubishi's outraged and outsized response to the charges has sensationalized the case. Led by a brash general counsel, Gary Schultz, about 2,000 workers--given the day off for the purpose--demonstrated with supporters outside the Chicago offices of the EEOC last week. "Two, four, six, eight," they chanted, "we're here to set the story straight." "Do we have sex on the line?" one man shouted. "Do we get naked on the line?" "No!" the crowd roared. Some waved placards; others unfurled a long banner that read EEOC PLEASE STOP SLANDERING ME.

But the demonstration may have turned a legal brushfire into a blazing inferno. Says Leslie Dach, executive vice president of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide and head of its Washington office: "They [Mitsubishi] have effectively shifted the dispute from the courts to the court of public opinion, where they are losing." Shortly after the demonstration, Mitsubishi Corp. chairman Minoru ("Ben") Makihara began sending signals about a settlement. M.M.M.A. is part of Mitsubishi Motors, which is itself part of Mitsubishi Corp., a loose alliance of more than 200 operating companies the Japanese call keiretsu. Top corporate executives fear that the troubles in Normal could reverberate throughout the group.

The charges have roiled the until now aptly named Midwestern town of Normal, where the plant has helped almost double the tax rolls and provided the kind of working-class prosperity that is fast fading from the American scene. Opened in 1987 as a joint venture of M.M.M.A. and the Chrysler Corp. (which sold its share to Mitsubishi in 1991), the $650 million assembly plant employs some 4,000 people, including 70 Japanese nationals--all of them managers--and almost 900 women. Assembly-line and maintenance workers make about $18 an hour and, with overtime and shift-preference pay, can earn annual incomes as high as $50,000 to $60,000.

For that kind of paycheck, many of the women who work at this and other auto plants are willing to shoulder some boorish behavior in addition to the tough, sometimes monotonous job on the line. Others are not. 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."

After repeated appeals to management and to their United Auto Workers local brought no relief, several women employees sought out Patricia Benassi, a prominent Peoria lawyer experienced in labor-relations cases, who began filing complaints with the EEOC. Almost immediately, reprisals began. One complainant found her car scratched and defaced; another was forced off the road as she drove home from work. Anonymous callers made such threats as, "You better watch your back, bitch."

Finally, when no corrective action by Mitsubishi seemed forthcoming, the 29 women represented by Benassi joined in a civil suit against the company in December 1994 charging "relentless sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual abuse from male colleagues and, in many cases, from their male supervisors." Although all the sexist acts were allegedly committed by Americans, the suit charges that Mitsubishi's Japanese managers were complicitous by their complacency. Japan's manager society is far more sexist than America's. In Japan women are almost unheard of in management.

Mitsubishi's American managers--all men--got a firsthand glimpse of this male-dominated culture when they spent time in Japan training. After work, the men were routinely taken to clubs where sexually explicit entertainment was available--a practice that was to be repeated in Normal. This kind of behavior, the complaint declared, has "contributed to an atmosphere in which males in the plant widely believe that management will tolerate abusive activities toward women."

After the EEOC investigators interviewed more than 100 current and former female employees of M.M.M.A., the commission in May 1994 declared that the evidence available and the lack of a significant response by the company were just cause for a "commissioner's charge." This gave it broader powers of subpoena, access to the plant and the right to interview employees privately. Arriving at the plant, the EEOC team was astounded to find that the company seemed unconcerned. No one had even bothered to remove the widespread sexual graffiti.

This month, fed up with Mitsubishi's stonewalling, the commission brought suit, charging that the company created "a hostile and abusive work environment" and not only failed to take appropriate action in cases where the complaints were made, but actually retaliated against the women who made them. The EEOC's suit essentially broadens the charges filed in the earlier private suit to include all female employees, past and present, who might have suffered harassment since the plant opened. That description, say EEOC investigators, could apply to more than 500 women. And under the revision of the Civil Rights Act in 1991, the EEOC can set compensatory and punitive damages in such cases of up to $300,000 for each worker, in addition to back pay and interest.

Perhaps that explains why M.M.M.A. responded so aggressively to the charges. General counsel Schultz, a company vice president, denied the commission's allegations, calling them a rehash of the "old charges" contained in Benassi's civil suit.

Urging employees to speak up in defense of the company--and their jobs--Mitsubishi set up a free phone bank with numbers of local news outlets and the names, biographies and phone numbers of elected representatives. Nor was the company subtle in orchestrating the demonstration outside the EEOC offices. Workers were given a choice: they could sign up for a free round trip to Chicago (on more than 50 Mitsubishi-chartered buses), a box lunch and the approbation of their bosses--or they could report to the idled plant, clearly identifying themselves as disloyal.

Despite its protestations, Mitsubishi may have already begun to take some measures to clean up its act. A plantwide sensitivity-training program was belatedly established last year. And while managerial jobs have not been affected, the company claims it has fired 10 workers--four this year--for incidents of sexual abuse. Perhaps more important, the alarm bell has finally sounded at the Tokyo headquarters of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Chairman Hirokazu Nakamura admitted that "there were such cases" at the Normal plant but insisted that they were dealt with properly. Nakamura also expressed concern that Americans would draw the wrong conclusions about the cars that continue to roll off the assembly line. "Unfortunately," he said, "the news coverage that the company somehow neglected the cases will give customers the impression that such a place cannot produce good products." Mitsubishi Motors last year generated sales of $38.2 billion and earnings of $596.48 million, yet the American division has been a money loser. And in the midst of the controversy, the company decided to take a charge against earnings to reflect those losses. Mitsubishi also named a new president, the New York Times reported.

In the U.S., M.M.M.A. CEO Tsuneo Ohinouye admitted last week that his company had been slow or otherwise off base in its response to the EEOC allegations but claimed that there were "a number of misunderstandings" in those charges. He expressed a willingness to start negotiations to settle the matter, while stressing his belief that Mitsubishi had not been "particularly insensitive in responding to claims of sexual-harassment activities when compared to other companies in the business." Neither the EEOC nor lawyers for the women plaintiffs in the civil suit have heard directly from the company.

Many of the male workers who have quietly supported their female counterparts now seem more emboldened. Entering her work area, one of the 29 complainants in the civil suit was given a standing ovation by her male co-workers. "We know what's happened," said one, "and we admire your courage." Not everyone does, however. Opening her locker to start her 5:30 a.m. shift last week, Terry Paz, another complainant, found a hand-scrawled note reading, "Die, bitch, you'll be sorry." She left the plant, fearing for her life.

--Reported by James L. Graff/Chicago, William A. McWhirter/Normal, Joseph R. Szczesny/ Detroit and Adam Zagorin/Washington

With reporting by JAMES L. GRAFF/CHICAGO, WILLIAM A. MCWHIRTER/NORMAL, JOSEPH R. SZCZESNY/DETROIT AND ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON