General Motors CEO Mary Barra is looking to set up an ‘Inclusion Advisory Board’ within the company amid protests against racism and police brutality in multiple U.S. cities including Minneapolis, New York City and the automaker’s hometown of Detroit.
Barra will serve as the chair of the new Inclusion Advisory Board, which will also include high-level GM executives and outside community leaders. She says GM hopes to become “the most inclusive company in the world,” after setting up the new advisory council.
In a letter announcing the new advisory board, which was sent to GM employees this week, Barra also said GM plans to implement new policies to drive change in the wake of the protests.
“In this moment, we each must decide what we can do – individually and collectively – to drive change… meaningful, deliberate change,” she wrote. “As one of the largest global companies, there is much we can do.”
GM was one of just two car companies to be included on the 2020 DiversityInc Top 50 list, which identifies companies that are making an effort to promote corporate diversity. The automaker was also ranked number one in the world in the Global Report on Gender Equality back in 2018, according to The Detroit Free Press, which ranks companies based on their gender equality practices.
Barra’s letter also identified a number of ways it was served as a leader in equality in the automotive industry over the years. For example, GM was the first Fortune 500 company to have an African-American on its board of directors in 1971 and became the first and only automaker to have an African-American vice president of global design in 2005 with Ed Welburn. Barra also became the first female CEO in the auto industry when she took the reigns at GM in 2014.
“My personal commitment is to ensure that the leadership of General Motors, and by extension, the entire GM family, consistently remains aware of our responsibility to bring awareness to injustice,” Barra also said in her letter. “Because awareness leads to dialogue … dialogue leads to understanding… and understanding leads to change.”
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Comments
This is well and good. However if you really want to make meaningful change as a large company, how about bringing some of the jobs that were outsourced to Mexico, China, Korea, etc. back to places like Cleveland, Flint, Pontiac, and Saginaw that have a large minority population and need jobs. Tangible and visible actions speak louder than words.
Wholeheartedly agree. De-industrialization did a number on many Intercities since the 70s. Even when automation increases the robotics still need technical support for operation, have the automated factories in said cities
Try to find a work force that will show up daily and not be on drugs today!
Even when we pay good money so many have records that do not permit hire, they can’t pass a drug test and even if the get past that they miss so much time they lose their job.
The American work force is not what it used to be.
Robots don’t call off, they are not under the influence and they are not ex sex crime felons.
After you get passed this then you need to fine someone that will put in a good days work.
Well maybe if De-industrialization haven’t happened in the first you probably won’t have the problems today. Besides the robots doing the heavy lifting and the new techs doing the fixing you’ll have a smaller, skilled workforce anyways.
Oshawa Assembly Plant was shut down by Mary ,it is an award winning work force since the McLaughlin – Buick factory in the early 1900 by Durant and McLaughlin formed GM .We were highly automated ,we had a low dollar compared to USD .We had health care ,we had a brand new paint shop .We have a new expensive electric vehicle world class test track .We currently are shut down through politics ,we currently make Covid-19 masks And small stamping in an 8 million sq. ft.. assembly plant sitting idle ,because every new product Is made off shore regrettably !
Unlike Saginaw, Cleveland, etc. atleast Oshawa still have a tech facility with an idoled assembly line.
Guestt :Yes you are right we’ve got a small Tech facility with say 500 EV and self driving car Engineers and technicians designing for the future .But that is a far cry from 12000 Hourly employees 25 years ago to 2000 three years ago to 300 hrly. and loss of almost al head office functions formerly done in purchasing ,traffic ,,follow up ,manufacturing engineering ,plant engineering ,process engineering ,inspection maintenance Many salaried jobs and almost all of GM of Canada’ as a separate division serving Canada and the US market ,it been a loose + loose scenario for years ,to a founding division af General Motors in Oshawa and for Canada ,especially under Mary’s leadership compared to CPC when the Chev,Pontiac,Canada Group rocked and GM North American designed and built products sold where we built them!
I think the large corporations have a lot of fault in this. How many of our parents or grandparents worked for the same company their entire lives? Young people today are now seeing their parents given the blue bag treatment after many years of service and think “why bother?” Hence the “I don’t give a damn” attitude and poor attitude toward large companies.
Moves like this are to head off law suits from groups that like to extort money from large corporations.
It happens way too often that the get threats of a lawsuit that will go away if you donate money to their cause.
Go woke and go broke. Mad Mary needs to concentrate on continued loss of market share in so many segments instead of living in fairyland
Forget if you are the best person for the job – rather, do you like to sleep with dogs, do you consider yourself fluid, did your great great great great granpapy pick cotton>? If yes, then we have a job for you.
Hers a idea for Mary, instead of trying to be the most inclusive company in the world why not try to be the best carmaker in the world.
Here’s an idea: How about creating–and really marketing–a lineup of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs that really is inclusive (there’s that word again!) of every market segment? You know, kind of like what GM used to do. These days, GM is obsessed with producing vehicles based solely on their potential to make money in the short term…and how is that working out, by the way? The really worrisome part is that while GM is currently excluding itself from one market segment after another, it’s betting the farm on electric and autonomous vehicles that have no profit potential at all in the short- to medium term, and even their long-term potential is hazy at best. Barra should stick to making great cars and trucks, and leave the virtue signalling to someone else.
Typhoid Mary is committed to making GM the most anti-white company in the world. Mary feels that the whole concept of judging a person by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin is absolutely ludicrous. Long live Bolshevism !!
Shouldn’t Mary step down then ? Oh I see it just applies to everyone else. OK thanks typhoid
This is great to see
C’mon she’s just going with the woke advice offered by consultants that are destroying every other American Company. Doesn’t it strike people as being odd that no other countries are going the woke CEO route?
It seems that Barra has puppet strings tied to her. Now I am sure “most inclusive company” will be right up there with “all electric future” and “triple zeros.” All of these platitudes take away from one major business fundamental: finding a need and filling it.
P. S. Isn’t there already a GM Board headed by the CEO whose responsibilities include assuring inclusion???? Asking for one of my consultant friends???
Mary will one day leave a much smaller GM that she destroyed with a multi million dollar payout and probably go buy the bmw she always wanted
It’s is funny how senior employees over the age of 50 are not part of this “inclusion.” GM and Ford have age discrimination suits up the wazoo.
Once again it is time for GM to walk out Barra and replace her with a younger more educated and less expensive CEO.
Previously, best practices in diversity inclusion, had evolved in the auto industry. We learned through promoting diversity inclusion and organizing external diversity boards for several auti companies that diversity initiatives that include White women and White latinos, primarily benefit those groups and not people of color. The goal of diversity inclusion should offer opportunities to disadvantaged people of color. Working in the front lines, as the first publisher of national auto magazines for African Americans, Latinos and Asians, I experienced discrimination first hand from White women and White Latinos. I also founded the Urban Wheel Awards that included every ethnic racial group, including women. Yes women and white Latinos need equality, but not racial equality. GMs partnership with the OZY media company demonstrates it’s lack of knowledge of diversity. Most of the latino agencies that represent auto companies refuse to do business with Black media, just as they do in South America, where racial inequality is far worse than here in the U.S. However, they product more from diversity inclusion than Hispanics of color, because the industry lacks true knowledge of diversity inclusion and marketing.