Angelo v. Bacharach Instrument Co., a Div. of American Bosch Arma Corp.
| Decision Date | 10 May 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 76-1127,76-1127 |
| Citation | 555 F.2d 1164 |
| Parties | 14 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1778, 23 Wage & Hour Cas. (BN 288, 14 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 7574, 81 Lab.Cas. P 33,539 Archangel ANGELO et al., Appellants, v. BACHARACH INSTRUMENT COMPANY, a division of American Bosch Arma Corporation, a New York Corporation. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Winn Newman, Ruth Weyand, Washington, D. C., Richard D. Gilardi, Janice I. Gambino, Gilardi & Cooper, Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellants.
H. Woodruff Turner, Aims C. Coney, Jr., Thomas A. Donovan, Kirkpatrick, Lockhart, Johnson & Hutchison, Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellees; David S. Lindau, Holtzmann, Wise & Shepard, New York City, of counsel.
Before ROSENN and HUNTER, Circuit Judges, and COOLAHAN, District Judge. *
This case was brought under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 1 to eliminate wage differentials allegedly based on sex. The question presented is whether female plaintiffs, employed as Bench Assemblers by the defendant Bacharach Instrument Company ("Bacharach"), carried their burden of proving that for purposes of the Act their work was equal to the work of more highly paid males employed as Heavy Assemblers in the same plant. At the close of the plaintiffs' case, the district court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to support an equation of the job categories at issue, and directed a verdict for the defendant. Plaintiffs have appealed from the judgment entered in defendant's favor. We affirm.
Bacharach, a division of AMBAC Industries, Inc., operates a manufacturing plant near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at which all of the fifty-four plaintiffs are employed. The plant produces such products as diesel automotive diagnostic equipment, instruments for the detection of combustible and toxic gases, and instruments for testing and recording temperature and humidity levels. At the time the instant case was tried, the collective bargaining agreement that covered the plant's production and maintenance employees, including the plaintiffs, identified fifty-five job classifications applicable to employees in the bargaining unit. Bacharach and the signatory unions 2 jointly assigned the fifty-five classifications to nine labor grades, and also assigned wage rates to the labor grades. Labor grade 1 was the highest paid, grade 9 the lowest.
Bacharach maintains two separate assembly departments at its Pittsburgh plant, Heavy Assembly and Light Assembly. All of the plaintiffs work in the Light Assembly area as Bench Assemblers; some are classified as Bench Assemblers-B (labor grade 6), while the others are classified as Bench Assemblers-A (labor grade 5). In Light Assembly, Bacharach produces a wide assortment of mechanical and electronic measurement and gas detection instruments. Among the devices manufactured by Bench Assemblers in Light Assembly are instruments that measure air flow, temperature, humidity, electrical current, gas pressure, and the presence or absence of certain gases in mines. Some Bench Assemblers also construct components known as sub-assemblies which are ultimately incorporated into the diesel fuel pump test stands that are built in Heavy Assembly. In addition to these test stands, workers in Heavy Assembly construct two other devices, comparators and methane monitors.
Plaintiffs allege that they are compensated at a rate of pay less than the rate paid to males in Heavy Assembly for the performance of equal work that requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and that is performed under similar working conditions. Specifically, the plaintiffs claim that Bench Assemblers-B (labor grade 6) should receive the same rate of pay as Intermediate Assemblers in Heavy Assembly (labor grade 5), or as Assemblers in Heavy Assembly (labor grade 3), and that Bench Assemblers-A (labor grade 5) should receive the same rate as Assemblers in Heavy Equipment (labor grade 3). 3 The complaint asserts that the difference in pay between the Bench Assemblers and the Heavy Assemblers is based solely on sex.
At the jury trial, the plaintiffs endeavored to equate the work of the Bench Assemblers with the work of the Heavy Assemblers by the testimony of witnesses employed in the two departments. Five female plaintiffs employed as Bench Assemblers-B (labor grade 6) testified that their work consisted of assembling certain instruments in accordance with blueprints and sequence sheets. In the course of doing their jobs, they said, they performed such tasks as cutting, wiring, soldering, drilling, aligning, gluing, reaming (enlarging pre-made holes), tapping (putting threads in already existing holes), filling (putting ink in recording instruments), testing, calibrating, reworking, and packing.
Among the instruments assembled by these witnesses were the Mini-Monitor, a gas detection device measuring about eight inches long and six inches wide, and the Canary, a small device used to detect the presence of gas in mines. One of the five testified that she did work on sub-assemblies that had previously been done by Intermediate Assemblers in Heavy Assembly, but she conceded on cross-examination that she did not know whether the work was performed in Light Assembly in the same manner that it had been performed in Heavy Assembly. None of the five witnesses could describe the work done in Heavy Assembly; the witnesses had rarely been in the Heavy Assembly area of the plant. One of the Bench Assemblers-B testified, however, that the devices produced in Heavy Assembly were "large," and another testified that she thought that some of the instruments assembled in Heavy Assembly could be larger than the witness box in which she was sitting.
The plaintiffs then offered a male Intermediate Assembler in Heavy Assembly (labor grade 5) as a witness; this witness, Robert J. Mazzei, was also president of the local union. He testified that his work consisted of, inter alia, assembling diesel fuel pump test stands in accordance with blueprints and operation sheets. Photographs introduced into evidence depict these products as having the shape of, but being somewhat larger than, ordinary pinball machines. In the course of doing his job, Mazzei said, he performed such tasks as wiring, soldering, drilling, gluing, reaming, tapping, painting, filling containers with oil, testing, calibrating, reworking, and packing. The aligning that he did sometimes required the use of portable lifts. The witness further testified that he, like most Intermediate Assemblers, spent about fifty percent of his time working on assemblies and sub-assemblies at a bench. But, he averred, other exceptional employees in Heavy Assembly, both labor grades 3 and 5, spent between ninety and ninety-five percent of their time on bench work. There was no indication, however, that the devices assembled at benches in Heavy Assembly were of the same complexity as those assembled at benches in Light Assembly. Mazzei indicated that some jobs formerly performed by Heavy Assemblers, either grades 3 or 5, had been transferred to Bench Assemblers, grade 6, and that some jobs formerly performed by Assemblers in Heavy (grade 3) had been transferred to Bench Assemblers, either grades 5 or 6.
Three females employed as Bench Assemblers-A (labor grade 5) testified that their work consisted of assembling a variety of instruments. They said that their jobs encompassed such tasks as wiring, soldering, drilling, aligning, gluing, reaming, tapping, filling instrument bulbs with gas, rethreading dies, calibrating, and packing. Among the instruments assembled by these witnesses were Tempscribes, which measure and record temperature; Serdexes, which record temperature and humidity; gas detectors; and sub-assemblies for products completed in Heavy Assembly. The size of the instruments they assembled was said to vary in size from "very small" to "quite large," the latter term meaning "about the size of a home movie projector." Some women, one witness testified, used magnifying glasses when working on small devices with a large number of parts.
One witness averred that the work she did on subassemblies was formerly performed by more highly paid males in Heavy Assembly; another said that she assembled instruments that were once assembled by males, but she gave no indication that those males were in Heavy Assembly or that they were more highly paid than she. None of the Bench Assemblers-A called to testify could describe the work done in Heavy Assembly; like the Bench Assembler-B witnesses, they had been in the Heavy Assembly area of the plant only infrequently.
The plaintiffs next presented Edward J. Krepley, who had worked as an Assembler in Heavy Assembly (labor grade 3) until a year before the trial, and who was the union's Chief Steward at the Bacharach plant at the time of the trial. He testified that his work as an Assembler had involved the assembly of fuel pump test stands. In the course of his work, he said, he had done wiring, soldering, drilling, reaming, tapping, filling fuel pump test stands with oil, calibrating, reworking, and packing. Krepley also testified that he had done aligning, which sometimes required the use of a hoist or a forklift. The witness indicated that he himself had spent sixty to seventy percent of his time working at a bench assembling methane monitors and comparators, and explained that the bench work done in Heavy Assembly generally involved preparing parts for sub-assemblies which were then installed in test stands. Krepley testified that some work had been transferred from Heavy Assembly to Light Assembly; the only specific example he gave was the wiring in a component of a test stand, but he conceded on cross-examination that additional wiring to connect the component to the stand itself had been performed in Heavy Assembly and was not performed in Light. During his testimony,...
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