Someone in the shoes of Helen Acamovich is not supposed to be frustrated and concerned about her career, or harboring fears, as she does, of finally hitting the “glass ceiling.”
With a business card carrying the title of vice president, the 42-year-old marketing manager with Magnetics International Inc., a subsidiary of Inland Steel Industries, has been a picture of professional forward motion.
“All along I’ve been moving right ahead,” Acamovich said in her cluttered trailer office at Magnetics’ remote headquarters in Burns Harbor, Ind. “Now I’m concerned.”
While recent studies show that women like Acamovich-white women-have gained the most from affirmative action, the charts and numbers often belie the workplace reality of weaving through the intricate emotional thicket that leads to equal opportunity.
Many supposed beneficiaries of affirmative action have lost faith in its promise.
From hundreds of workplace interviews conducted by Tribune reporters in the last three months, it’s evident that there is a wide gulf between talking about diversifying the work force, as many executives do today, and actually doing it.
What executives and their employees are discovering is that workplace change is slow, difficult and often painful.
Inland Steel, the nation’s fifth-largest steel company, provided unusual access to Tribune reporters to examine the company’s aggressive effort to diversify its work force.
Company officials readily acknowledge problems with the effort, but note this is a long and arduous process. And, in many ways, the experience at Inland reflects what goes on at large companies nationwide.
The disillusionment with affirmative action that Helen Acamovich feels is but one problem that workers on all sides of the issue cite as their employers strive to change the makeup of the workplace, by race and gender.
At Inland, they tell personal stories in sometimes unvarnished language of being stigmatized, of being frustrated by a system they say does not pave the way to the upper reaches of management, and of hard feelings among office co-workers as some people move up while others do not.
In many ways their remarks transcend affirmative action, striking at the heart of the controversy-equal opportunity in an unforgiving economy.
While employees also tell success stories, there is no minimizing the difficulty of changing the makeup of the work force. Acamovich knows that well.
The daughter of Eastern European immigrants, she grew up in the shadow of steel mills in Northwest Indiana and began her career at Inland in 1980, in customer service. It would be the beginning of a fairly rapid rise up a ladder that few women climb-sales, the traditional passage to the summit.
In her early years with the company, Acamovich said she and many other women followed a game plan for success that involved doing everything they could to blend in with men. Some wore tailored suits-blue or gray, with Oxford shirts and bow ties-that mimicked those of males. Others adopted certain customs: Going for beers after work, playing golf, getting together to watch sports on weekends-all the things they thought men would do.
Acamovich wanted “to be one of the boys,” and in her desire not to be left out, she reached what she called the low point of her effort, at an upscale Canadian strip joint across the river from Detroit, where she had gone with male co-workers of the sales force.
“Even though it’s more social, there is still business conducted in those situations,” she said. “I was at a point in my career when I felt it was very important not to be excluded.”
It matters little now. Despite professional accolades-customer awards, good reviews, strong sales plans and a leadership role in forming a women’s group at Inland-Acamovich seems convinced she will not progress much further. She said she does not blame her bosses or anyone in particular, but she is discouraged.
Perhaps this is unjustified impatience or a misreading of her actual status. But the perception of being stuck weighs heavily on her mind. Like many other women managers in corporate America, Acamovich believes the door is open, but not all the way.
She, like many women at Inland, feels that after reaching a certain job status, it is impossible to be viewed as anything more than tokens.
“I just think the path for talented white males is still different here,” said Acamovich. “Sometimes I’m still told to talk succinctly and literally behave in what would be the formula for a white male. . . . And the truth is, I don’t think I can do that anymore.”
Perceptions nag at Marie White, a black 36-year-old customer-service coordinator who started as a secretary at Inland in 1985 and says she still is perceived as someone who got in the door on the diversity bandwagon. She worked days at Inland and attended school in the evenings at Roosevelt University to earn a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
But when opportunities for advancement did come her way, she felt they were described differently from those offered to white males and even white secretaries trying, like herself, to move into the professional arena. Now she is disillusioned and dispirited.
“They think you don’t have a stake in the company,” White said, her voice quavering. “Why is that? Because you’re not white? I work as hard as they do.”
Perceptions prevail
Even when women and minorities are hired or promoted, there is a potentially damaging perception that they benefited from their race or gender. At times, this stigma makes them feel they are being watched and measured because they are different.
In a corner cubicle at Inland’s Loop headquarters, Phil Jimenez, 24, international automotive sales representative, sometimes feels trapped.
“A healthy attitude would be that I got in the door because I’m Latino, but I’ve also done this by myself,” he said thoughtfully. Yet other scenarios come to mind that “sabotage” his self-confidence, he said.
He is not sure how to fit in with the other Hispanics in sales who have formed a self-help group. “I say `Why must we cluster ourselves?’ ” he asked. “But then I say, `If it weren’t for this group, I might not be here.’ So I’m stuck.”
A 1990 survey on images of ethnic groups conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago showed great gaps in the way ethnic groups are perceived. In every way measured, blacks and Hispanics were viewed more negatively than whites by the participants.
The survey found the kind of stereotypes that Glenda Johnson, inventory manager at Ryerson Coil Processing, an Inland subsidiary, discovered last year in a companywide survey of employee attitudes toward race and different cultures.
The study had “horrifying results,” according to Johnson, and said “nothing positive” about blacks, who were described as “scary,” “hostile” and “lazy,” and as wanting “something for nothing.”
“It was so negative,” she said, “I found myself very, very depressed. It was shocking.”
The fact of life with affirmative action is that perceptions do not die quickly, and no easy effort will overcome these mental pictures that are the grist for what separates people by race or sex or ethnic background.
Workers, who spend years within reach of each other, often live in very separate workaday worlds, convinced nothing will change.
Consider Andy Taylor, a 56-year-old black man whose father worked in the steel mills in Gary, who has worked himself at Inland’s mills for 26 years.
With the machinery in full roar one hot summer day at the 12-inch bar mill, he was not feeling very good about the respect he has gotten as a general millhand. Nor about his progress.
“Let’s say they got a hillbilly who can’t count to three; they’ll put him in over you,” he said and grimaced. “I have to go through so many changes to prove I can do this job. The black man has got to do 200 percent to get there.”
Around the bend came Mark Pavlovich, a soft-spoken 17-year veteran at Inland who is one of the few white workers in the plant.
At first, he explained, it was difficult fitting in, but that’s not a problem anymore.
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Now, he said, he is content where he is. He only wishes that the others wouldn’t make assumptions about him because he is white.
“Most people think that if you are white, you got a good education,” he said. “I don’t have that. And they figure that you should pick up things right away. And they think that since you are white you are going to be promoted. For me, that’s not the way it worked out.”
Used as scapegoat
Just as affirmative action has become a political flashpoint in Washington, it has found a controversial place in the work force and is sometimes used as a scapegoat by those whose personal expectations have not been met.
Some people who may have peaked professionally may blame affirmative action for blocking their way or failing to deliver. Others might blame affirmative action when they lose out in the competition for a high-level position, overlooking the fact that competition intensifies for upper management jobs.
But the reality is practically irrelevant to workers who feel cheated. That is the power of perceptions surrounding affirmative action. Whether justified or not, employee attitudes determine the success of any company’s effort to diversify.
On the 11th floor of Inland’s downtown Chicago headquarters, Tyrone Banks carries out the duties of a sales account manager, his latest title after 25 years at Inland. Banks sees his role going beyond the daily tasks of sales; he is a counselor for newly hired black employees and a champion of workplace diversity.
The 48-year-old Banks has myriad computer-generated numbers tacked on his office credenza. He can roll off statistics on blacks, Hispanics, Asians, men and women at Inland as fast as he can spout details about steel plates.
Banks once described life for blacks in the pre-diversity movement days at Inland like this: “From 8:30 to 5 you were on stage. You were an actor. You conform to what you expect they want you to be. You become a white male.”
Banks’ tireless mission to assist minorities is viewed differently by some co-workers; they see someone distracted from his No. 1 responsibility, his job. To them, this is a double standard.
“Ty could spend two hours talking about diversity and meanwhile there could be a fire in his department he’s not attending to,” said Bob Powell, a retired Inland sales manager. “But I’m not saying that’s wrong. Ty has a passion for diversity. . . . Without Tyrone’s involvement, I think it (diversity) would have been slower to take place and happen.”
Code of silence
More private businesses are recognizing that the biggest growth in the work force will continue to be in the female and minority ranks. Whether they support or reject the concept of affirmative action is practically irrelevant, because the work force will change, with or without them.
Still, affirmative action remains an extremely touchy public relations issue for many companies. Because of its volatile image, it is subject to many different and many times negative opinions, from employers and employees.
Some companies say they do not want to upset their white workers, especially if the companies are cutting jobs. And some say they do not want to rile their stockholders or customers. There is almost a code of silence about an issue that many companies like to endorse, but quietly, very quietly.
A number of Chicago-area firms declined to make their employees available to discuss corporate affirmative action efforts with the Tribune. These included such giant, highly visible firms as Motorola Inc. and McDonald’s Corp., even though both have been praised nationally for opening the doors for minorities and women within their ranks.
Chicago’s largest law firm, Sidley & Austin, also said no, despite its being one of the few law firms cited regularly for its welcoming efforts toward minorities. “The partners felt they didn’t want to get caught up in the whole national debate,” said Larry Bodine, a spokesman for the law firm.
Similarly, Amoco Oil Co. issued a declining statement that said, in part, that the firm was “aware of the legislative reviews” under way and was “taking a look at everything that is going on.”
This is often a deliberately quiet evolution, played out by companies so sensitive to the political volatility of affirmative action that they choose to call it something else-usually diversity, sometimes equity or fairness. Even Inland, among the most aggressive promoters of diversity, avoids the term.
“We use something called fairness,” said Steven Bowsher, Inland’s vice president of sales and marketing and the driving force behind the company’s effort. “Affirmative action tends to conjure up numbers.”
And strong emotions. “People get hung up on affirmative action, so we stay away from the nasty word,” said Don Richards, a senior vice president and director of resource development for Chicago-based Leo Burnett Co., the nation’s largest advertising firm.
While the shortcomings of Inland’s efforts are all too apparent to some, there is general acceptance that changing the makeup of the work force by race and gender will take a long time, maybe generations.
“It’s got nothing to do with numbers, nothing to do with quotas,” said Kenn Johnson, accounting supervisor at Ryerson Coil Processing. It has to do with how people see each other. You change that over lifetimes. Not over two years, five years or even 10 years.”
Johnson, who is black, said he has to temper his expectations and not let impatience get the better of him.
“I might be tempted to move people by race or gender more quickly, but that might . . . ultimately hurt the long-term goal,” Johnson said.
The question on many minds is “How do you know diversity works?”
“A lot of what we’re doing now is on faith. . . . We’re measuring feelings of empowerment,” said Dave Byrne, Inland’s director of management and organizational development.
It is a very inexact measurement. Most large companies issue annual reports that tally the racial and gender makeup of their employees. But while the numbers can indicate which companies might be guilty of hiring discrimination, they do not speak to the broader question of making employees feel positive about their contributions.
Helen Acamovich and many other women may feel like tokens, but Deborah Benning, a sales representative at Inland subsidiary Ryerson Coil Processing, said she has gotten over that. “Now I’m one of them. They’re used to it,” Benning said.
As pleased as Benning is with her standing at Ryerson, she is not counting on seeing herself or other women in the company’s top echelon soon. “I don’t think I’ll see it in my career,” she said.
Feeling threatened
It is almost a full-time job reassuring employees of their value to the company, said Mark Yambrovich, the general manager of Ryerson Coil Pickling, another unit of Inland, in the Pullman community on the Southeast Side.
“Minorities say it (diversity) is not fast enough, while white males feel threatened,” said Yambrovich, who is white. “You can’t help but feel threatened.”
Bowsher said Inland is probably years away from moving its diversity training into the blue-collar ranks, the largest chunk of Inland’s employment, because most Inland production employees are unionized. That presents special problems, not the least of which is the cost to the company of pulling production workers away from their jobs.
“It’s probably more difficult at the factory level,” Byrne said.
Bowsher said the company must keep the diversity push alive because there is no denying the work force is changing and companies have to react to the new reality of more women and minorities.
Bowsher is firm in his determination. “We’re not taking a vote on this,” he said. He does not need to look far to be reminded of what has not been accomplished, but that is not justification for abandoning what progress has been made already.
“We’re limited as a company by the society and us,” he said, “but I don’t see any limits. I don’t think we’ve come very far. We’ve got a lot further to go.”
The diversity efforts are a mirror on the company, and to Yambrovich, a mirror on America.
“What we’re seeing here is a smaller picture of what’s happening in society. It’s controversial here. . . . What we have here is a concentrated group of employees dealing with a controversial issue. If we stay after this, they will be better than average.”
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Tuesday: The doors can open for everybody when a company is determined to make it happen.