Word: normalization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...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...
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...
...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...