The Daily - Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017

A quarter-century ago, the Ford Motor Company paid out millions of dollars in settlements after a group of women at two Chicago plants accused the company of allowing a culture of harassment and menace. Now, new allegations at the very same Ford plants raise questions about the possibility of change. Guest: Catrin Einhorn, a reporter for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Duration: 30m
Broadcast on: 21 Dec 2017
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card. With Saver, you are an unlimited 3% cashback on dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores. That's unlimited cashback on ordering takeout from home. Or unlimited cashback on tickets to concerts and games. So grab a bite, grab a seat, and earn unlimited 3% cashback with the Saver Card. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Burbank. This is The Daily. Today, a quarter century ago, Ford Motor Company paid out millions of dollars in settlement. After a group of women came forward to accuse the company of a culture of harassment and medicine. Now, a new round of allegations at the very same Ford plants raises questions about the possibility of change. It's Thursday, December 21st. Get away from it all. In the new explorer from Ford, if you're looking for four doors and more interior room than any vehicle in its class, if you want four litre power and push button four wheel drive in the best selling vehicle in its class, if the only thing you want to leave behind is the city. Okay, so life before Ford, there wasn't a lot of it. Suzette Wright, in the '90s, is a young single mom living in Chicago. I was working two jobs, minimum wage, a receptionist at Supercuts, and she's doing data entry at another company. We're taking classes here and there at a community college. Her dad works at the Ford Motor Company. There's a big sprawling plant on the south side of Chicago on the far south side. And for some reason, I want to visit my dad at the plant. And so she happens to be there one day visiting him and someone mentions that there are tests coming up. Tests to get jobs. Tests to get jobs, yeah. Catron Einhorn is an investigative reporter at the Times. So she takes a test and she finds out that she gets it. And she is just elated as she said, "Crazy insane elated." Immediately, I was making a lot more money. She knows that a job at Ford means that she would be tripling her hourly wage. She would go from about $5 an hour to about $15 an hour. Oh my gosh, 30 years, full benefits, you retire, you're good. This was 1993. So what happened when she started working at the factory? Orientation is a really big eye-opener for her. During orientation, all the workers are taken on this tour of the plant. We go downstairs and we're touring paint and trim department, chassis, seat and cushion and throughout the entire walk. There were cat calls already, fresh meat being yelled out, men high-fiving each other on the line. We were actually yelling fresh meat.

Transcription truncated.