Auto cuts slam blacks

The Detriot News reports:

As American auto factory jobs have steadily moved south of Detroit into nonunion plants over the past 25 years, African-Americans have been hit hardest by the loss.

Whites and Latinos also are losing ground, but the decline in stable, high-paying union work is far greater among blacks, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank.

The transition is chipping away at the middle-class lifestyle auto factory work has provided for generations of black families, many who left their native south years ago to pursue opportunity up north.

"Union jobs in auto (plants) has been one of the most importance sources of well-paid employment for African-Americans since World War II," said John Schmitt, one of two economists behind the study.

In 1979, 2.1 percent of all African-American workers in the United States were helping assemble cars and trucks. At the time, there was one nonunion auto plant operated by a foreign automaker in the United States.

By 2004, when there were 27 foreign-owned plants in 11 states, the share of black workers assembling vehicles had fallen more than one-third to 1.3 percent, according to the study. That equates to a loss of about 120,000 jobs, given the current size of the work force.

The shift helped pull down median weekly wages of all black workers 5 percent between 2000 and 2004, to $523, Schmitt said.

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