Brown v. Ameritech Corp., 97-1391
| Decision Date | 29 October 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-1391,97-1391 |
| Citation | 128 F.3d 605 |
| Parties | 75 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 226, 72 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,043 Will BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. AMERITECH CORP., Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Gerald A. Goldman, Arthur R. Ehrlich (argued), Jonathan C. Goldman, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Benjamin Ghess (argued), Ameritech Corp., Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before ESCHBACH, EASTERBROOK and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.
Will Brown was a building cable splicer technician with Illinois Bell during the days before the famous break-up of American Telephone & Telegraph Company in 1984, which came about as a result of the Modified Final Judgment (MFJ) in the case of United States v. AT & T, 552 F.Supp. 131 (D.D.C.1982), aff'd, Maryland v. United States, 460 U.S. 1001, 103 S.Ct. 1240, 75 L.Ed.2d 472 (1983). One consequence of the MFJ was a reconfiguration of the regional telephone businesses in the United States. Illinois Bell became part of Ameritech Corporation, the Regional Bell Operating Company for a number of Great Lakes states. These changes affected Brown's job in a way that he deemed discriminatory. The district court granted summary judgment for Ameritech on Brown's claims of race discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, based upon a job reassignment and his subsequent early retirement. We affirm.
Brown, an African-American, began work in 1968 for what was then called Illinois Bell, in his position as "building cable splicer technician," a job which was highly skilled and required him to set up telecommunications systems in buildings. His job was classified as Wage Group I, the highest paid group under the pertinent collective bargaining agreement. After Ameritech split off from AT & T in 1984, however, most of the building cable splicer technician positions were assigned to the former mother company. Brown, who stayed with Ameritech, found himself in the new position of "cable splicing technician," also a Wage Group I job. His new position involved a greater variety of tasks, including splicing and waterproofing covering, working in manholes, trenches, on poles and on ladders, lifting or moving heavy objects, and directing the work of an apprentice. Brown had several medical conditions, including back and knee problems and severe asthma, which required him to avoid some of those duties.
In 1987, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) ordered Ameritech to install Network Interface Devices for all of its customers. Given the massive nature of the undertaking, the ICC gave Ameritech ten years in which to complete the work. The record does not show how quickly the project progressed during the early years, but in 1994, Ameritech decided to create Customer Access Closure (CAC) teams in order to finish the job. These teams included both newly hired (and low skill) employees and cable splicer technicians who were supposed to train the new hires and oversee their work. All cable splicer technicians assigned to CAC teams remained in Wage Group I and retained all their employment benefits. Some of them, though apparently not all, were chosen to be "lead persons" on the team; the lead persons received a pay increase.
Clifford Hill, Brown's immediate supervisor and another African-American, decided to put Brown on a CAC team. This shift in job responsibilities meant that Brown lost his company truck, because individual employees did not need trucks in the CAC positions. Instead, the CAC teams worked in a limited geographic area, using two trucks per team. Brown was quite displeased with his new assignment. He contacted his union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Local 165, and complained that the CAC assignment was demeaning and below his skill level. The union responded that the collective bargaining agreement permitted this assignment and it could do nothing. Brown then made the same complaint to Glenn Jevert, a White man and Hill's supervisor. According to Brown's deposition, Jevert then called the benefits department to see if Brown was eligible for Ameritech's early retirement program. The response was affirmative, which prompted Jevert to say, "You can take it and you are out of here."
Brown now argues that he interpreted this comment as an ultimatum: do the CAC work or retire. About two months later, however, Brown retired on his birthday under Ameritech's Supplemental Income Protection Plan (SIPP). Under SIPP, Brown received $25,000 worth of benefits and a $193,737.10 pension--the result of a sweetener that added three years to his age and years of service for purposes of the pension calculation. At the time, Brown signed a form affirming that it was his understanding that the SIPP retirement program was completely voluntary. About a year after his retirement, he filed this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, alleging that his assignment to the CAC team was discriminatory and that he was constructively discharged.
Although Brown admits that the CAC assignment technically fell within his job description, he argues that it was nonetheless discriminatory because it fell so far below his proven skills and experience with the company. He likens it to a decision to take a senior trial lawyer and to banish her to the law library writing background memoranda, or to bury her in a warehouse full of documents doing fact research on a case: both would be work lawyers are expected to do, but both are examples of tasks usually assigned to the junior person on the totem pole. Furthermore, Brown asserts that "[v]irtually all employees assigned to the CAC teams at this time [i.e.1992 to 1994] were black." He drew this conclusion from his frequent observations of the CAC teams congregating at work before they went out on job assignments and working in the field as Brown drove past in his company truck. These observations also formed the basis of Brown's antipathy to the kind of work the teams performed: it normally involved nothing more complicated than attaching a new network interface box to the wall of a house or building and...
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