Allen v. Pacific Bell

• Decision Date: 22 July 2002
• Docket Number: No. CIV.01-04017 DT.,CIV.01-04017 DT.
• Citation: 212 F.Supp.2d 1180
• Court: U.S. District Court — Central District of California
• Parties: Clarence J. ALLEN, Plaintiff, v. PACIFIC BELL, SBC Communications, and does 1 to 100, inclusive, Defendants.

212 F.Supp.2d 1180

Clarence J. ALLEN, Plaintiff, v. PACIFIC BELL, SBC Communications, and does 1 to 100, inclusive, Defendants.

No. CIV.01-04017 DT.

United States District Court, C.D. California, Western Division.

July 22, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Garo Mardirossian, Joseph M Barrett, Mardirossian & Associates, Los Angeles, CA, James Urbanic, Carney R Shegerian, Shegerian & Associates, Beverly Hills, CA, for Clarence J Allen, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, plaintiff.

George E Preonas, Thomas R Kaufman, Seyfarth Shaw, Los Angeles, CA, for Pacific Bell, SBC Communications, defendants.

Benjamin Nathaniel Sternberg, Shegerian & Associates, Beverly Hills, CA, for does, 1 to 100, inclusive defendant.

ORDER

GRANTING

DEFENDANTS PACIFIC BELL AND SBC COMMUNICATIONS, INC.'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

TEVRIZIAN, District Judge.

I. Background

A. Factual Summary

This action was originally brought by Plaintiff Clarence Allen ("Plaintiff") on his own behalf and as a representative of a class against Defendants Pacific Bell ("Pacific Bell") and SBC Communications (collectively, "Defendants"). Plaintiff asserts the following claims in the Third Amended Complaint, which is the operative complaint:

1. Disability discrimination in violation of FEHA, Cal. Gov't Code § 12940(a);

2. Disability discrimination in violation of ADA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101-12213;

3. Age discrimination in violation of FEHA, Cal. Gov't Code § 12941;

4. Age discrimination in violation of ADEA, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634;

5. Discrimination for taking leave in violation of CFRA, Cal. Gov't Code § 12945.2.

The following facts are undisputed¹:

Nature of Pacific Bell's Business

Pacific Bell provides telephone service to business and residential customers throughout California. To accomplish that goal, Pacific Bell employs approximately 45,000 employees who are organized and assigned to dozens of different job classifications, each with different duties. For example, to perform work related to establishing or repairing telephone service to a customer, Pacific Bell employs (1) Services Technicians, some of which actually go to a customer's home or business to install the wiring which connects the customer to Pacific Bell's network, or physically repair problems with the wiring between the customer's home and the central office; (2) Facilities Administrators who work in desk jobs troubleshooting problems that can be repaired through computers without physically leaving the office; (3) Maintenance Administrators who also work in a desk job and receive repair orders, look into the source of the trouble, and identify whether the problem should be repaired by a Services Technician or a Facilities Administrator; and (4) Service Representatives who take telephone calls from customers for new or changed service, and schedule appointments for customers with Services Technicians. While these four jobs are all different, they all work together toward the same goal of bringing dial tone to all Pacific Bell's customers.

The employees who install and repair telephone service are part of a collective bargaining unit represented by the Communications Workers of America ("CWA"). The job classifications of Services Technicians, Facilities Administrator and Maintenance Administrator have all been established through collective bargaining and are set forth in the collective bargaining agreement between the CWA and Pacific Bell. That agreement specifies not only the job classifications but also the pay rates associated with each job classification, along with the seniority and transfer rights of the employees in the bargaining unit.

Plaintiff's Services Technician Job at Pacific Bell

Plaintiff began working for Pacific Bell in 1974, and continued to work for Pacific Bell approximately 25 years, until his employment terminated November 3, 2000. For the last twelve years of Plaintiff's employment at Pacific Bell, he worked in the job of Services Technician, and at all times relevant to this case, he was assigned to Pacific Bell's Pasadena garage, working five days per week, eight hours per day. Another thirty to forty Services Technicians also worked out of the Pasadena garage.

Services Technicians' primary responsibility is to connect phone service for Pacific Bell customers, bringing dial tone from the telephone terminals throughout California to residential and business customers. Services Technicians are also charged with the duty of repairing phone service when it goes down. As such, all Services Technicians are expected to be able to complete the customer installations or repairs that arise each day.

The telephone network connects each individual customer to a local "terminal" that typically serves ten to twenty homes. These terminals are typically located atop a telephone pole or in an underground vault. Depending on the situation encountered at a particular home or business, completion of the service or repair order could require climbing poles or ladders, crawling under houses or in narrow crawl spaces, and varying degrees of heavy lifting. Plaintiff admits that he could be assigned to work anywhere in Southern California, and "some days they ship you all over town," and that he did not know exactly what a job would entail until he arrived at the account.

The official job description for the Services Technicians position expressly states that they are required to be available to perform physically tasking work, including climbing poles and ladders. The job description states that Services Technician is a "Class II Physical" position, meaning physically demanding. It also states that Services Technicians are required to pass a Pole Climbing Training Test to qualify for the job, showing that Pacific Bell considered pole climbing so essential to the Services Technician position that no one was allowed to do it without a climbing certification. The second page of the job description further reiterates the need to climb where it states the Services Technicians "climb ladders (maximum 32 feet), poles and aerial platforms" and that the job requires "lifting, carrying and extending ladders."

Plaintiff admits that when he worked as a Services Technician he was required to climb up telephone poles to access terminals about once each day. Indeed, where Plaintiff was asked on an application for Social Security Disability benefits "What do you do all day in this job," Plaintiff wrote "climbing, lifting, crawling," and further specified that he typically climbed 1-1/2 hours each day, crawled two hours each day, frequently lifted more than 50 pounds and sometimes more than 100 pounds. In addition, Plaintiff admits that his supervisors repeatedly told him that he was hired to work eight hours a day and that would be wherever Pacific Bell decided to assign him and that he had no right to work in a set territory or on a particular job. Plaintiff further admits that he was required to perform overtime work wherever problems arose after a rainstorm or other natural disaster struck some part of Southern California. Indeed, that job requirement is noted in the very first paragraph of the official job description which states that Services Technicians may be "subject to emergency callout and extended periods of mandatory overtime during adverse weather conditions and emergency restorals." In other words, if a severe rainstorm or other natural disaster hits Southern California, Services Technicians are expected to go wherever lines are down and restore telephone service. After larger rainstorms, even managers with pole climbing certification are sent out to help restore interrupted telephone service.

Services Technicians are assigned both "service" and "repair" orders. Service orders are where customers request that Pacific Bell provide them with new or changed telephone service. Repair orders are where customers report to Pacific Bell that their phone service is not working properly. A Router in the control center uses an automated system which sorts and distributes the work among the Services Technicians, and distribute "tickets" to the Service Technicians setting for the several various orders they would be expected to perform on a given day. To improve efficiency and productivity, an effort is made to assign job tickets in geographic proximity to one another. Plaintiff's workload was roughly evenly split between service orders and repair orders, and he admits that he could not be certain exactly what work would be required on an order just from looking at the "ticket." The uncertainty of what work would be required on a particular order is especially true for repair orders because the Services Technician does not always know the cause of the problem until he actually arrives at the customer's home and examines the situation. Interruption to the telephone service could be caused by a problem inside the house, at the terminal which leads to the house, at the "B-box" that feeds multiple terminals, or anywhere in between those places.

The terminal which leads to an individual's home or business is often located atop a telephone pole, but it can also be located in other places. In some instances the terminal is located in an underground vault. To access these underground terminals, the Services Technician must first lift a heavy manhole cover and then climb down a ladder. Each Services Technician also carries a 32 foot ladder on his truck, which is used to attach or repair telephone wires from the telephone pole terminal to the house. Installing or repairing telephone lines at a home or business might also require accessing a crawl space under the home and related physical work. Even when not climbing or crawling, the job requires continuous standing, walking, bending or lifting.

Pacific Bell contends that serious customer service problems could arise from allowing people who could not climb to continue to work as Services Technicians. Customers...