GM's Barra to Head New Inclusion Advisory Board
General Motors CEO Mary Barra has appointed a new board to address racism and discrimination that may be lurking within the company. The automaker has taken a vocal stance against racism following widespread protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd and wants to be clear as day that it’s committed to diversity and inclusion. While not the most novel of concepts, as there isn’t a single company taking the counter argument, GM believes it can become the least racist of them all, with a little work.
“The board will guide our work to improve diversity and inclusion in our company, with the ultimate aspiration of making GM the most inclusive company in the world,” Barra wrote Monday in an internal document scooped by Automotive News.
GM recently set aside $10 million to support organizations that promote inclusion and racial justice, including a $1 million donation to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The board will help the company determine how best to spend the remaining funds.
According to the CEO, the advisory board will be tasked with supporting the words, deeds, and culture rooted in inclusion and racial justice while weeding out language and ideas that do not. The group will be comprised of eight members from GM and four individuals from outside the company. The latter group includes social justice advocate and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, Tonya Allen; CEO of Ignition Media Group and son of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, Dennis Archer Jr.; chief people officer at GM subsidiary Cruise, Arden Hoffman; and CEO of Ingersoll Automotive, GM Minority Dealer Advisory Council member and chairman of the Buick-GMC dealer council, Todd Ingersoll.
Barra will head the board herself, backed by President Mark Reuss; CFO Dhivya Suryadevara; Kim Brycz (VP of HR); Craig Buchholz (VP of communications); Gerald Johnson (VP of manufacturing); Matt Tsien (chief technology officer); and Telva McGruder (Workplace Engineering and Operations Solutions/ex-President of GM’s African Ancestry Network).
The board was first mentioned when General Motors released a statement committing itself to anti-racism on Juneteenth. Other promises include the aforementioned donations and a vow to battle racism and all of its manifestations:
At General Motors, we recognize that the world — and our company — must evolve toward a more equitable future. Our company stands for more than just the products we build and sell. We stand for the dignity of people, justice, tolerance and inclusion. So, we will use our size, scale, and the collective voice of the entire GM team to stand up for these values.
“We have a lot of work to do as a board and as a company, but this is an encouraging start,” Barra said in her letter to staff. “Please continue the dialogue with one another and in your own social circles, because dialogue leads to understanding, and understanding leads to change. Together, we will do this.”
[Image: General Motors]
Consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulations. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, he has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed about the automotive sector by national broadcasts, participated in a few amateur rallying events, and driven more rental cars than anyone ever should. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and learned to drive by twelve. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer and motorcycles.
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I know this is all the rage but it has been going on awhile. This diversity stuff isn’t without costs either. Know a guy who worked summer job for a law firm in Detroit. This was probably late 90s early 2000s. He was ultra low level basically driving documents around the Detroit area for this firm. While I probably could say the automaker name I won’t, but they were getting big on diversity and promoting Minorities to higher positions in the company. The law firm he worked for had been dealing with the auto industry for a couple decades. What He told me ended up happening is that people incapable of handling the higher level jobs were promoted to Too High of a level within the automaker for diversity reasons. When they then couldn’t handle the job they were let go or demoted.... which of course led to a big increase in discrimination lawsuits against the automaker. So while you can be 100% against discrimination, the downside is that these sort of work initiatives can very easily hurt both the employees that they’re trying to help as well as the company doing the diversity initiatives. Not to mention the product could very well suffer if you don’t put your best people in the correct positions, leading to recalls, quality issues, safety concerns etc. It may look good on Facebook but this stuff has very real consequences to careers, companies, finances, employees, consumers, and global competitiveness. Put the best people in the best position and forget about all this identity politics stuff and everyone will be better off, no matter what color/sex/ethnicity or any of the million other buckets people like to divide and put Americans into (or Canadians or anyone else). The right thing, and the American thing, is judging people by their talents and hard work and ability and not some silly trait they’re born with. This sorta stuff is toxic and tearing us apart and automakers are not immune to it.
Yep, it's been going on for quite some time now. One of Nasser's pet causes at Ford back then was getting white guys out of management. Can you imagine Dongfeng declaring it a crisis that their company employed too many Chinese?