The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a look at a new racial justice and diversity initiative at materials maker Lanxess Corp.
The article examines how several companies in the Pittsburgh area are addressing racial issues in our country and gives a good bit of ink to what Lanxess is doing.
In particular, the resin supplier started an internal task force on racism and social inequities in July, weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The task force has been meeting every Monday with a focus on both society and the company's operations.
It has 10 members — evenly divided, the paper says, between men and women and Black and white employees — who have been working on a supplier diversity strategy for its North American business.
They've also been building partnerships with nonprofits and historically Black colleges, as well as looking in society at large, at recommendations from a local group aimed at building racial equity in the region.
The paper interviews two Black employees on the task force who say they've not personally experienced discrimination in their careers at the company.
And it interviews Antonis Papadourakis, the president and CEO of North American operations for the German company, who talks about how witnessing Floyd's killing was a wake-up call to see what the company could do.
This has clearly been a summer of building racial awareness.
Erin Pustay Beaven, a colleague at Rubber & Plastics News (RPN and Plastics News share the same ownership), recently wrote this piece from an auto industry event, about an engineer and her observations coming up in her career as a Black woman in manufacturing. It's worth a read.