Let me assuage your fears a bit. Having contracted with a number of large automotive factories in the US and Mexico, I've seen a similar - but not identical - d

Let me assuage your fears a bit. Having contracted with a number of large automotive factories in the US and Mexico, I've seen a similar - but not identical - disparity at dozens of locations. And it's not a decision motivated by bigotry, as far as I can tell. There's a very common practice to separate the offices/engineering from production/maintenance. Two reasons are given: there's sensitive, valuable pre-production/financial/proprietary data in the offices, and there's dangerous equipment on the plant floor, requiring safety glasses/steel toes/hard hats. It goes unstated that the plant floor and coverall-clad workers are dirty in comparison to the cubicles, carpet, and dress clothes in the offices. And the bathrooms for the laborers are filthy, even with multiple daily cleanings, while the bathrooms for the office would still be nice even if it was only the office staff themselves that kept them clean. The tasks in the office are cerebral, while the tasks on the plant floor may require manhandling (a sexist term?) a 9" angle grinder all day. This results in an age, gender, and (in conditions where people of ethnic minorities are cheaply available for entry-level labor) ethnic disparity. It's by no means absolute - there are women on the plant floor, and young ethnic men get promoted into management all the time. The DOL report [1] is careful to call out B&H's error only as "This hiring disparity ... remains after adjusting for differences in legitimate hiring factors". There's nothing wrong with hiring mostly young men to shoulder heavy boxes all day, but if a strong woman or wiry old man willing and able to do the work comes in, you'd ought to hire her or him as readily as an equally qualified and capable young man, discarding your bias that you've previously hired mostly young men. And if someone comes in for office work, and has the necessary credentials, but is of the same age/ethnicity/gender as the production personell, you'd ought to hire him for office work as well, dispite the fact that you usually hire older, or that young men usually work on the plant floor. [1] https://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/ofccp/OFCCP20160384.pdf https://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/ofccp/OFCCP20160384.pdf