United States v. Local 189, United Papermakers & Paperwork

Citation282 F. Supp. 39
Decision Date26 March 1968
Docket NumberCiv. A. No. 68-205.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General v. LOCAL 189, UNITED PAPERMAKERS AND PAPERWORKERS, AFL-CIO, CLC; United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC; and Crown Zellerbach Corporation.
CourtUnited States District Courts. 5th Circuit. United States District Court (Eastern District of Louisiana)

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Louis C. LaCour, U. S. Atty., New Orleans, La., David L. Rose, Civil Rights Div., U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for United States.

Richard B. Sobol, New Orleans, La., for plaintiff-intervenors.

Warren Woods, McInnis, Wilson, Munson & Woods, Washington, D. C., C. Paul Barker, Dodd, Hirsch, Barker & Meunier, New Orleans, La., for defendant unions.

Louis F. Oberdorfer, John Vardaman, Jr., Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Washington, D. C., Michael J. Molony, Jr., Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere & Denegre, New Orleans, La., for Crown Zellerbach Corp.

ORDER

HEEBE, District Judge.

This cause having come on for hearing on the motion of the United States for a preliminary injunction against the defendants, as well as a trial on the merits of the complaints of the United States and the plaintiff-intervenors, Anthony Hill, David Johnson, Sr., and Local 189a, United Papermakers and Paperworkers, for permanent injunctive relief;

IT IS NOW THE ORDER OF THE COURT that, for the reasons assigned, the relief sought be, and the same is hereby, GRANTED to the following extent:

(a) The defendants Crown Zellerbach Corporation and Local 189, United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, and United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, their officers, agents, employees, servants and all persons and organizations in active concert or participation with them, are hereby ENJOINED and RESTRAINED, pending the further orders of this Court, from discriminating against the Negro employees of the defendant Crown Zellerbach Corporation's paper mill at Bogalusa, Louisiana, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in particular, the defendants are hereby ORDERED to ABOLISH forthwith the system of "job seniority" and any other seniority system designed to discriminate against the Negro employees at said plant or having the effect of so discriminating, insofar as such systems may apply to the promotion, demotion, or selection for training of Negro employees hired prior to January 16, 1966 in competition with employees of the opposite race; and the said defendants are ORDERED to ESTABLISH, with respect to such promotions, demotions and selection for training, and in the place of such "job seniority" or similar systems, a system of "mill seniority" as follows:

(1) Total mill seniority (i. e., the length of continuous service in the mill) alone shall determine who the "senior" bidder or employee is for purposes of permanent or thirty-day promotions, or for purposes of demotion, in all circumstances in which one or more of the competing employees is a Negro employee hired prior to January 16, 1966;

(2) For jobs which operate only one shift per day, promotions to fill casual or vacation vacancies will be made on the same basis as permanent and thirty-day promotions;

(3) For jobs which operate more than one shift per day, promotions because of casual or vacation vacancies will be awarded to the senior (as determined in (1) above) qualified man on the shift and/or machine where the vacancy exists;

(4) Promotions and demotions above shall not affect persons who have formal written waivers in effect at that time. Persons promoted shall go around a waived position in any job slot, and persons demoted shall likewise go around such a position on the way down;

(5) Qualified employees shall be selected for training on the same basis as for promotion described above.

The provisions of this decree pertaining to the implementation by the defendants of a system of "mill seniority" shall be placed into effect within ten days from the entry of this order; prior to the implementaton of the said "mill seniority" system, the defendants are ENJOINED and RESTRAINED from interfering and failing to comply with the agreement of March 19, 1967, as modified by the agreements of June 16, 1967 and January 3, 1968, between the defendant Crown Zellerbach Corporation and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance of the United States Department of Labor.

(b) The defendant Local 189, United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, and United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, their officers, agents, members, employees, servants, and all persons and organizations in active concert or participation with them, are ENJOINED and RESTRAINED, pending the further orders of this Court, from interfering with or hindering, by striking, threatening to strike, or otherwise, the compliance by the defendants with the foregoing provisions of this order.

REASONS

This action was filed by the Attorney General on behalf of and in the name of the United States on January 30, 1968, against Local 189 of the United Papermakers and Paperworkers AFL-CIO, CLC (all the members of which are of the white race), its parent union, the United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, and Crown Zellerbach Corporation, seeking relief for violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., and from interference with the implementation of Executive Order 11246, 30 F.R. 12319 (September 28, 1965), forbidding racial discrimination in employment opportunities by government contractors. On February 15, 1968, Local 189a, United Papermakers and Paperworkers, AFL-CIO, CLC, (all the members of which are Negroes), David Johnson, Sr., and Anthony Hill, both of whom are Negro employees of Crown Zellerbach and members of Local 189a, filed a motion for leave to intervene as parties plaintiff herein and as class representatives. By orders of February 21, 1968 and March 8, 1968, this Court granted such leave and a complaint in intervention was filed. On March 20, 1968, this cause came on for hearing on plaintiff's motions for preliminary injunctions against defendant unions and against defendant Crown, and on the prayers for permanent injunctions by plaintiff and plaintiff-intervenors. By stipulation of the parties pursuant to Rule 42(b), the hearing was limited to the following issues:

"(a) Whether, under the facts and circumstances of this case, the job seniority system which was in effect at the Bogalusa paper mill prior to February 1, 1968, was unlawful?
"(b) If the answer to the above question is in the affirmative, what is the necessary or appropriate standard or guideline for identifying the seniority of employees for purposes of promotion and demotion?"

All other issues in this case were not submitted to the Court but were expressly reserved for the hearing which all parties agree will commence on April 30, 1968.

We find, as a matter of fact, (1) that Crown and the white local actively engaged, prior to January 1966, in a pervasive pattern of discrimination against the Negro employees at Crown's Bogalusa paper mill with respect to employment opportunities of promotion, demotion and selection for training; (2) that the continuation of the "job seniority" system, or any seniority system which incorporates job seniority as a substantial factor in promotion, demotion and selection for training, operates, because of the situation engendered by the pervasive past discrimination by the defendants at Crown's Bogalusa paper mill, to effectively presently discriminate against Negro employees at the mill whenever Negro employees hired prior to January 1966 compete against white employees for promotion, demotion or selection for training; (3) that a system of "mill seniority," as defined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between Crown and the local unions presently in force at the Bogalusa plant, would not have such a continuing discriminatory effect against the Negro employees; and (4) that "job seniority," as a consideration in the promotion and demotion of employees within a particular line of progression and in the selection of employees for training, is not necessitated by safety or efficiency factors, nor for any other reason is "job seniority" objectively a better or more desirable basis than "mill seniority" for promotion, demotion or selection for training of employees within the context of the present lines of progression in force at Crown's Bogalusa paper mill.

As a matter of law, we hold that this Court has jurisdiction of this action under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-6(b) and 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and § 1345, and that discrimination against Negroes with respect to employment opportunities at this mill is properly subject to attack by the government pursuant not only to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,1 but also under § 209 of Executive Order 11246.2 That order, like the order in Farkas v. Texas Instrument, Inc., 375 F.2d 629, 632 (5th Cir. 1967), is to be accorded the force and effect of statutory law. 375 F.2d 632, n. 1 and text.

The white local is not immune from suit or injunctive process of this Court by reason of the general terms of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. Even prior to the enactment of Title VII, the Supreme Court had held that racial discrimination by a union was not sanctioned or protected from corrective court orders by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Virginian R. Co. v. System Federation No. 40, 300 U.S. 515, 57 S.Ct. 592, 81 L.Ed. 789 (1937); Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 338 U.S. 232, 70 S. Ct. 14, 94 L.Ed. 22 (1949); Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Howard, 343 U.S. 768, 774, 72 S.Ct. 1022, 96 L.Ed. 1283 (1952). These decisions were not predicated on any peculiarity in the anti-discrimination provisions of the Railway Labor Act, Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U.S. 448, 458, 77 S.Ct. 923, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957), and we find the holdings of these cases...

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