Ron Edwards, local civil rights activist and member of Minneapolis Urban League, talks about accusations of racism and discrimination against minorities found in the General Mills Company. Edwards also comments on a boycott of General Mills products.
SPEAKER: You are just about to go to Saint Louis, I know, to a National Urban League meeting. Does this decision by the Minneapolis and Saint Paul chapters mean that you will have a national campaign against General Mills Products?
MR. EDWARDS: Yes, it does, most certainly does. And we also are hopeful at this point, and in fact, have commitments from some other national organizations that I am not at Liberty to divulge at this point, who are also committed to a national selective buying campaign against GMI.
SPEAKER: How are you going to go about getting publicity, and how are you going to let people know about this? Are you going to have demonstrators, for example, at the GM plant?
MR. EDWARDS: I very well could be. I understand that there is a turbulent situation existing in GMIs plant in West Chicago and has been for quite some time its possibility of actions there, the possibility of actions at GMIs, corporate headquarters here in Minneapolis, possibility of actions against other plants and subsidiaries across the country. We are very serious and very committed to resolving this issue.
SPEAKER: Yeah. Well, what are the specific complaints, Mr. Edwards, that you have?
MR. EDWARDS: Well, the first one is that and this is, in accordance with the law itself, executive orders 11246, the Civil Rights Act 64, titles 6 and 7, cetera, and all the rest of them is that--
First of all, General Mills does not have an affirmative action program. It's not even really a policy statement. In other words, it has nothing on paper in which would allow it to implement the kinds of upward mobility and upgrading and advancement that we're talking about for minorities, particularly for Black people.
They don't even have anyone who really has the responsibility to coordinate that. They have a person out there by the name of Wes Westerfield, who allegedly, has those responsibilities. But he's not even minority people inside the Corporation itself know of this person. Those are one of the demands that we placed before GMI in July of last year in Detroit, at the Urban League National Convention there.
SPEAKER: Yeah. Well, now, if General Mills is violating these laws on hiring 11, 2, 4, 6 and so on, why wouldn't legal action be better than this boycott plan?
MR. EDWARDS: Well, there is legal action being taken.
SPEAKER: I see.
MR. EDWARDS: There's a two-pronged thrust against GMI. The National organization of Women have initiated complaints, class action suits against GMI. And in fact, those were filed yesterday and today in Minneapolis and Chicago with OFCC, the United States Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, and the State Human Rights Departments of the State of Illinois in the state of Minnesota.
SPEAKER: So the selective buying campaign then will just go along with the legal action that's already being taken and will call attention to it.
MR. EDWARDS: Correct. It's part of the pressure that big business well understands.
SPEAKER: In the statement that the Urban League put out, you referred to other racist practices at GMI, what did you mean by those?
MR. EDWARDS: Well, at this point, I don't want to divulge everything that we have pertaining to them. There is still an opportunity for some positive negotiations. But we're certainly talking about promotions. We're talking about documentation, which shows, that particularly Black females, who are in a comparable situation to white females are being paid less money. We find situations of females, Black or white, being in comparable positions of white males, same length of time, employed, same position, same job category and $2,000 to $3,000, $4,000 difference we find in terms of the training program that minorities are not being brought in for management training positions but also the very hostile and entrenching type of attitude on the part of the GMI's management and executive people.
They say that-- in fact, they at the meeting that we had with them last week, they challenged us. They said that, fine. If you think that you can conjure up that kind of national support against us go ahead and do it.
SPEAKER: But you've got actual documentation that there are violations of--
MR. EDWARDS: Oh, very much so.
SPEAKER: --equal employment.
MR. EDWARDS: Yes. The class action suits could have not been filed if that documentation had not been present. We even have memos between corporate officials of GMI--
SPEAKER: Yeah.
MR. EDWARDS: --which expressed some very racist opinions and points of view.
SPEAKER: Have these talks with GMI, Mr. Edwards, been going on for a long time that has over a period of years?
MR. EDWARDS: Since 1968, correct.
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