Boyd v. Bechtel Corp.

• Decision Date: 22 August 1979
• Docket Number: No. C-75-1582 WHO.,C-75-1582 WHO.
• Citation: 485 F. Supp. 610
• Parties: Spotsel L. BOYD, Jr., Richard J. Carter, Sheila McDonald and Alvino Hart, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. BECHTEL CORPORATION; Bechtel International Corporation; Bechtel, Incorporated and Bechtel Power Corporation, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

485 F. Supp. 610

Spotsel L. BOYD, Jr., Richard J. Carter, Sheila McDonald and Alvino Hart, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. BECHTEL CORPORATION; Bechtel International Corporation; Bechtel, Incorporated and Bechtel Power Corporation, Defendants.

No. C-75-1582 WHO.

United States District Court, N. D. California.

August 22, 1979.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

William E. Hoefs, Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges, San Francisco, Cal., for defendants.

Elizabeth G. Leavy, Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, Mark S. Rudy, San Francisco, Cal., for plaintiffs.

Cole & Scott, Rufus L. Cole, John Houston Scott, San Francisco, Cal., Oliver A. Jones, Regional Counsel, NAACP, San Francisco, Cal., Lois L. Johnson, Bushnell, Caplan & Fielding, Roderick P. Bushnell, San Francisco, Cal., for plaintiffs/objectors.

OPINION AND ORDER

ORRICK, District Judge.

After more than three years of vigorous and thorough preparation, on the eve of trial, the parties to this employment discrimination suit against Bechtel Corporation, Bechtel International Corporation, Bechtel, Incorporated and Bechtel Power Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "Bechtel") brought on behalf of the black employees at Bechtel, presented to the Court for its approval a proposed settlement agreement. Following a lengthy and hotly contested Mandujano-type¹ hearing, the Court, for reasons discussed herein, finds that the agreement is fair, reasonable and adequate.

Before embarking upon a detailed discussion of the reasons for approving the settlement, it is appropriate to offer some general observations concerning the difficulties now facing plaintiffs in trying or settling "second generation" Title VII suits of the type here at issue.

"First generation" Title VII suits involved overt intentional acts and policies which were not difficult to discern as discriminatory, such as the blanket exclusion of women from certain positions regardless of their ability to do the work, e. g., Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Co., 444 F.2d 1219 (9th Cir. 1971), or the use of tests with an obvious racial bias, e. g., Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 91 S.Ct. 849, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971). Today, however, after vigorous enforcement of our laws against employment discrimination by government agencies and "private attorneys general," employers are aware that their overall employment policies must, at the very least, comply with the letter of the law. Discrimination is likely to be found, if at all, in the enforcement, at lower levels, of company-wide policies which appear fair and reasonable on their face. Many employers have enacted affirmative action programs, and others, having contracts with the government, are periodically inspected by federal compliance agencies. Thus, if discrimination in employment exists in large organizations, it is likely to be subtle, detectable, if at all, only upon careful examination of sophisticated statistical analyses. As Judge Clark put it in Swint v. Pullman-Standard, 539 F.2d 77, 99 (5th Cir. 1976):

"If there ever was a time of facile Title VII litigation, it surely ended with the demise of intentional violations of equal employment opportunity. Today's parade of Title VII cases present more and more subtle manifestations of discrimination. Proof of invidious practices becomes more difficult as the ability to separate the real violation from the unfounded suspicion grows harder. This is especially so since many employers and unions * * * have made substantial good faith efforts toward eliminating racial distinctions for the work force."²

It is in this context that the Court examines the settlement in the typical "second generation" case presently before it.

I.

A.

The original complaint in this case was filed on July 28, 1975, by plaintiffs Thomesine Lewis, Spotsel L. Boyd, and Richard J. Carter on behalf of themselves and a class of Blacks similarly situated, charging Bechtel, at the San Francisco Home Office, with engaging in a pattern of racial discrimination in employment in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (1974). Plaintiff Lewis subsequently withdrew from the case and has been dismissed. On June 16, 1976, the plaintiffs filed a First Amended Complaint against the defendants in which they added as a named plaintiff Sheila V. McDonald. This complaint was similar to the original one but added allegations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq., as amended (1974 & 1978 Supp.). On or about October 22, 1976, the plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint against the defendants in which they added as a named plaintiff Alvino J. Hart. On January 3, 1978, the Court entered an Order that the action could be maintained as a class action under Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.³ Defendants have denied all of the material allegations of all of the complaints.

Plaintiffs, seeking back pay, compensatory damages, and injunctive relief, contend that defendants have engaged in across-the-board discrimination⁴ against them as a class in connection with job assignment, promotion, salary increase, transfer, training and development, discharge, layoff, and rehire. In addition, the four named plaintiffs raised particularized claims of racial discrimination: Spotsel Boyd, a black male employed at Bechtel as an engineer from May, 1974, until March, 1976, claims discrimination with respect to salary increase, promotion, work assignment, performance evaluation, transfer to an overseas assignment, and critical observations regarding absenteeism and tardiness; Sheila McDonald, a black female who has been employed by Bechtel in the Finance and Accounting Department since November, 1972, claims discrimination with respect to promotion and retaliation for filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"); Alvino Hart, a black male employed at Bechtel from April, 1973, until May, 1976, claims discrimination with respect to denial of training, promotion, tuition refunds, salary increases, transfer, layoff, and rehire.

The Bechtel group of companies consists of a number of separate corporations, chief among which are the four named defendants in this case: Bechtel Corporation, Bechtel International Corporation, Bechtel, Incorporated and Bechtel Power Corporation. The Board of Directors for each company is identical, and the stock of each of the companies is privately held by members of the Bechtel family and by members of the Board of Directors of the various companies. All of the Bechtel companies engage in engineering construction and related activities. They contract primarily with private parties to design and construct a variety of facilities, including refineries, petro chemical complexes, mining-metallurgical facilities, pipelines, and electrical power generating stations.

Bechtel is divided into a number of operating divisions, as follows: Hydro and Community Facilities Division, Mining and Metals Division, Pipeline and Production Service Division, Los Angeles Power Division, and Gaithersburg Power Division. In addition, within the Bechtel Corporation certain administrative operations are carried out for the whole group of companies in a variety of departments. These departments include: Finance and Accounting, Internal Auditing, Information and Planning Services, Procurement, Data Processing, Manpower Services, Special Management Services, and Labor Relations and Safety.

The defendants' workforce has a hierarchy of increasing levels of responsibility, skill and compensation, structured upon a system of salary grades which is currently composed of twenty levels. The lower eight grades, A through H, are called the "letter grades" and the upper twelve grades, grades 21 through 32, are referred to as the "number grades." Compensation, the level of responsibility, and the required skills progress in increasing alphabetical and numerical order. Numerous different jobs are lumped together in any one salary grade. There are presently over five hundred different job classifications which are held by the employees of the defendants. Broad categories have been devised to delineate groups of jobs having similar job content. Thus, Bechtel has divided its work into five job groups or "families": engineering, construction, administrative, technical support, and design drafting.

B.

During the period in which this action was pending, the plaintiffs conducted thorough and wide-ranging discovery which was designed to investigate all of the dimensions of the alleged class discrimination. They propounded to the defendants and the defendants answered in excess of three hundred interrogatories. Plaintiffs served on defendants seven separate requests for production of documents which obligated the defendants to produce thousands of separate documents. They noticed and took the depositions of approximately forty of defendants' managers and supervisors. In addition, they obtained defendants' year-end personnel tapes and had them carefully reviewed and analyzed by computer and statistical experts. Through their discovery, the plaintiffs obtained voluminous information concerning the nature of the defendants' personnel procedures, policies, and practices. For their part, defendants took the depositions of all of the named plaintiffs and all of their trial witnesses, with the exception of plaintiffs' statistical expert, and developed their own statistical analysis based upon their year-end personnel tapes.

Trial was scheduled to commerce on October 16, 1978. At the conclusion of the Second Pretrial Conference on October 12, 1978, counsel for the parties reached a tentative agreement or settlement. On October 17, 1978, counsel again met with the Court concerning the settlement and were advised that the Court would not be bound by any agreement they may have reached on the issue of attorneys' fees and costs, which would be set by the...