Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

Early history: 1898–1926

The first Goodyear factory opened in Akron, Ohio, in 1898. The company originally manufactured bicycle and carriage tires, rubber horseshoe pads, and poker chips, and grew with the advent of the automobile.[8]

In 1901, Goodyear founder Frank Seiberling provided Henry Ford with racing tires.[9] In 1903, Goodyear president, chairman and CEO Paul Weeks Litchfield was granted a patent for the first tubeless automobile tire.[10] In 1910, the company purchased an existing rubber factory in Bowmanville, Ontario, in Canada, which expanded their manufacturing outside of the United States for the first time.[11]

Board of directors

Former Board members include Shirley D. Peterson, William J. Contay, James C. Boland and Rodney O'Neal. Mark Stewart is the chief executive officer and president of the company (since 2024), succeeding Richard Kramer.

• James A. Firestone.[56]
• Werner Geissler.[56]
• Peter S. Hellman.[56]
• Richard J. Kramer.[56]

Foreign relations with Indonesia in the 1960s

Following the military coup in Indonesia in 1965, the Indonesian president Suharto encouraged Goodyear to return and offered rubber resources and political prisoners as labor. In an NBC special aired in 1967, reporter Ted Yates aired footage showing former Communist rubber union workers escorted at gunpoint to the rubber plantation.

"Bad as things are in Indonesia, one positive fact is known. Indonesia has a fabulous potential wealth in natural resources and the New Order [the fascist regime headed by pro-U.S. General Suharto] wants it exploited. So they are returning the private properties expropriated by Sukarno's regime. Goodyear's Sumatran rubber empire is an example. It was seized [by the rubber workers] in retaliation for U.S. aggression in Vietnam in 1965. The rubber workers union was Communist-run, so after the coup many of them were killed or imprisoned. Some of the survivors, you see them here, still work the rubber – but this time as prisoners, and at gunpoint.[59]"

Pay discrimination lawsuits

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated,

"Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber's plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter's salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.

President

• 1) D. E. Holl, 1898–1899
• 2) R. C. Penfield, 1899–1903
• 3) L. C. Miles, 1903–1906
• 4) Frank A. Seiberling, 1906–1921
• 5) E. G. Wilmer, 1921–1923
• 6) G. M. Stadelman, 1923–1926
• 7) Paul W. Litchfield, 1926–1940
• 8) Edwin J. Thomas, 1940–1958
• 9) Russell DeYoung, 1958–1971
• 10) Victor Holt Jr., 1971–1972
• 11) Charles J. Pilliod Jr., 1972–1974
• 12) John H. Gerstenmaier, 1974–1978