Auto cuts slam blacks - hit hardest as good-paying factory jobs fade

[The Straight Story]

Auto cuts slam blacks

African-Americans are hit the hardest as good-paying factory jobs fade away.

Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News


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.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060216/AUTO01/602160402