Jesse Jackson says that Toyota "seems to have the idea that doing business with us is good for business, not for the cost of doing business." Photo credit: VINCE BOND JR.
DETROIT – Ford, Toyota, General Motors and Nissan received strong reviews in the 2018 Automotive Diversity Scorecard from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition that was released this month.
The coalition also praised Hyundai, which in recent years has gone to number 4 in the sector of dealers in minority interests – beyond Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
The scorecard, issued during the Global Automotive Summit of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund, assesses car manufacturers' commitment to improving diversity in employment, advertising, marketing, purchasing, dealerships and philanthropy. The score is available in three colors: green, the highest level, yellow and red.
Green indicates that a company uses best practices to build ethnic diversity and has shared its goals, initiatives and investments in this area. Yellow indicates that diversity is clear, but not all investments in dollars, key figures and other factors have been disclosed.
Kudos to Toyota
Red means that the diversity initiatives of a company do not exist or are not mentioned or that no relevant information was provided for scoring.
Automakers can also get red scores for not completing the survey, which happened last year with BMW and resulted in coalition chairman Jesse Jackson calling for a boycott of the company. The coalition and BMW have since met and discussed the company's dealer network and other diversification efforts. At the end of 2017, BMW had 21 dealers to a lesser extent in 361 stores, a decline from 2016 onwards, according to the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.
"When we challenged the industry for the first time, we were isolated to be on the assembly lines," Jackson told Automotive News. "Our demands have risen to boards and C-suites."
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With the congratulations of Toyota's diversification strategies, he added that the automaker "seems to have the idea that doing business with us is good for business, not for the cost of doing business."
Ford and Toyota had green ratings in five areas, with yellow in the dealer category. Ford is in second place in the sector with a total of 170 stores for minority shareholders of 3,214 dealers, while Toyota is the fifth with 72 minority roofs.
GM landed four green reviews, including the dealer category. The car manufacturer was nominated for nomination of minority dealers in 2017 and strengthened its ethnic list with 16.
Wanted: & # 39; Good bank & # 39;
Nissan and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles each had three green ratings, while Hyundai had two. Hyundai still had a yellow rating in the dealer category, but the automaker made a profit.
In 2011, Hyundai ranked seventh among car manufacturers in dealership dealers in minority positions by 48. By the end of 2016, the Korean car manufacturer had been blown to 78 roofs of minority targets, pushing it to fourth place. At the end of 2017, the number of minorities of Hyundai was less than 85.
NAMAD credited former Hyundai Motor America CEO Dave Zuchowski, who took over at the beginning of 2014, with the commitment to expand his base for minority distributors. Zuchowski was expelled in December 2016, but Hyundai said it will continue to build up its list of minority distributors.
Brian Smith, COO of Hyundai Motor America, said the company still has work to do in the dealership and supply sector.
"We need to do a better job by actually building the base of our supplier candidates, so when bids go, we do not wait to see who's bidding, we know where to go, the bids," Smith said during a panel discussion with Jackson. .
"The same for our recruitment process and dealer channels," he said. "We worked with it [NAMAD] For years about how you can become better at building a good base of talent for new dealers …. We want to think of a very good bank. "