In many ways San Francisco's Levi Strauss & Co., producer of the famous blue denim Levis, is a model employer. It pays top wages, and pioneered in hiring and promoting blacks. Yet Levi Strauss managers failed until recently to grasp the importance of the rising aspirations of women. Today, typical of many companies, Levi Strauss is striving to redress that lapse with a new program designed to give women the same job opportunities as men. Chairman Walter A. Haas Jr. was moved to act by pressures from the Government, from his conscience and from his customers. Levi Strauss sells mainly to young people who have plenty of progressive notions, and the company could ill afford to carry a male chauvinist label.
Bunched Low. The company, which employs 18,000 people in 35 plants, began to study a year ago how its women were treated. It found that most women were bunched into the lowest-paying jobs as secretaries, patternmakers, stencilers. Most men were in the better paid posts as salesmen or cloth cutters. Though 85% of the company's employees were women, only 9% of the 572 managers were women. Says Sharon Weiner, who heads Levi Strauss's "Affirmative Action Program for Women": "When a woman came to the door for a job, she was told only about those that had historically been held by women. Nobody ever sat down and thought what it was like to be a woman in the company."
One of the new program's immediate goals is to lift more women into jobs that once were monopolized by men. The first woman recently completed the management-training program; she is now a product manager. All together, 13 other women have been promoted to management positions after on-the-job training.
The chiefs of all the company's manufacturing divisions are under orders to appoint women to the next two management posts that open in their personnel departments. Personnel Boss Thomas Borrelli rejects the notion that women are bad management risks because they are more likely to leave than men. Says he: "The tendency has been to compare the turnover of managers with the turnover of secretaries. But if you look at the turnover of women managers, it is probably less than men."
Secretaries Out. For the first time, Levi Strauss is moving women into its field sales force; two are already working, one is in training, and orders are out to hire at least seven more before September. Some retailers warned that women in selling would have trouble with lecherous buyers. Haas rejects that argument. A more serious concern is that married saleswomen with children could face problems at home if they were forced to put in three-day or four-day stretches on the road. "We let the woman decide if she can handle it," says Borrelli.