Word: fords
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter made a survey of 60 U.S. firms, to which he submitted a detailed questionnaire delving into pay scales, working conditions and advancement opportunities for blacks and coloreds. He also visited plants and spoke to nonwhite workers in their communities. According to his findings, Ford deserves top marks for doing away with the most noxious symbols of apartheid. The company regularly consults nonwhite employees on plant problems and even recognizes black unions; though such unions are not specifically prohibited, black organizing is effectively blocked by South Africa's labor code, which excludes unionized blacks...
This year Ford has also set up an apprentice program for blacks; though at present only 43 trainees (out of a total of 3,278 nonwhite workers) are enrolled in the five-year course, the company plans to expand the program over the next two years. Other Ford achievements: a desegregated sports program, in which the races mix easily in soccer games and in company recreation rooms, and a home-loan plan that has enabled 212 nonwhite employees to build their own houses...
Though few have yet moved as far as Ford, other companies have also taken steps against apartheid. Colgate-Palmolive, which has a plant near Johannesburg, assumed most of the costs of operating a black township school in a neighboring community to ensure higher educational standards for nonwhites than in government-run schools. While a very few firms, notably IBM, have long had equal-pay-for-equal-work policies, many more companies have lately been moving to redress a particular grievance of blacks: a system of bonuses that traditionally allowed whites to earn about three or four times as much...
Even so, since old prejudices die hard, progress is often slow and uneven. Despite its commendable record in other fields, Ford has not yet overcome apartheid in the canteen at its plant in Neave, near Port Elizabeth. Though all workers are served at the same cafeteria, the whites eat on one side of a partition and nonwhites on the other side. Few other companies follow Ford's example and encourage nonwhites to participate in negotiations about wages and work rules...
...door-to-door encyclopedia and Bible salesman, a while as a plumber's helper in Oregon, a while as a disc jockey in Fort Worth, and so on. Willie was forever setting off for new destinations with everything he could call his own loaded into his 1946 Ford: Martha, the three kids they soon had, some furniture and an "Oklahoma credit card" (a length of hose for siphoning gas from roadside tanks). A few years of this and Martha began heading for a destination of her own: divorce court. "I tried being like other people," Willie says. "I tried...