Cox v. Allied Chemical Corp., 75-2109

• Decision Date: 15 September 1976
• Docket Number: No. 75-2109,75-2109
• Parties: 13 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 769, 12 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,180 Luttrell B. COX, Plaintiff, Sherwood Cox, Plaintiff-Appellant, Alvin P. Lockett, Sr., et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, Anthony White and Henry Clark, Sr., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, Appellants, v. ALLIED CHEMICAL CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1094

538 F.2d 1094

13 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 769,

12 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,180

Luttrell B. COX, Plaintiff Sherwood Cox, Plaintiff-Appellant Alvin P. Lockett, Sr., et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors Anthony White and Henry Clark, Sr., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, Appellants, v. ALLIED CHEMICAL CORPORATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 75-2109.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 15, 1976.

Donald Juneau, Hammond, La., for appellants.

Victor A. Sachse, III, Paul M. Hebert, Jr., Baton Rouge, La., for Allied Chemical Corp.

James D. Thomas, II, Baton Rouge, La., for Local 216, etc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Before TUTTLE, AINSWORTH and GEE, Circuit Judges.

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge:

This Title VII suit involves a plant-unit seniority system currently in effect at the Baton Rouge plant of appellee Allied Chemical Corporation, and the effect of an EEOC conciliation agreement on the right of certain appellants to sue the company and the appellee union. Following a finding that the unit seniority system used by Allied had violated the Title VII rights of two black employees who had been laid off or demoted as a result of cutbacks within their respective units, the district court granted relief in the form of back pay, but refused to reinstate these plaintiffs or to enjoin any further use of the system.

In this appeal, we consider first whether two appellants who were signatories to an EEOC conciliation agreement dealing with the use of the unit seniority system at the plant were properly dismissed as intervenors by the district court. We also consider the argument that the district court erred in dismissing the claims of a white plaintiff on the grounds that his Title VII rights had not been affected by Allied's unit seniority system.

In its opinion, ¹ the district court made lengthy findings of fact and conclusions of law, the pertinent portions of which are briefly summarized as follows. In 1966 Allied Chemical Corporation purchased the Baton Rouge Plastics Division plant from W.R. Grace and Company. At that time, and until August 1971, the plant's hourly employees were divided into four work "units:" Production, Services, Maintenance, and Stores. The racial composition of the latter two units, both at the time of the institution of the present suit and at all times prior to that, was white. At the time of the plant's purchase by Allied, the Production unit was all white and Services all black; however, as a result of a collective bargaining agreement signed in 1967, a substantial number of blacks from Services transferred to Production as "baggers." Finally, in 1971, as a result of a conciliation agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, all of the jobs in the Services unit were merged into the Production unit and Services was abolished as a separate unit.

The 1971 EEOC conciliation agreement modified in certain respects, the company's then-existing "unit seniority" system. Up until the date of the agreement (October 18, 1971) seniority for the purposes of promotion, transfer, or layoff was governed by the length of service within a particular unit. A reduction in the work force of the Services unit, for example, would take place without regard to the seniority of the Services unit employees as compared with that of employees of the other units; the employees outside Services would not be affected, regardless of whether they had less seniority than those employees to be laid off. The EEOC conciliation agreement undertook to modify the use of this unit seniority system, as it pertained to black employees who transferred between units or between job classifications within a unit, by providing that such transferees were to be credited with their total plant seniority for purposes of that transfer, promotion, layoff, vacations, or recall. ² (The black employees who were formerly in Services were allowed to use their total plant seniority as their unit seniority in the Production unit.) In the absence of a transfer, however, a black employee's seniority, for layoff purposes, continued to be measured by the length of time he or she had been in that particular unit. The collective bargaining agreement executed by the appellee union and the appellee company on October 15, 1973, and which was in effect at the time this suit was instituted, contained seniority provisions parallel to those in the EEOC conciliation agreement. ³

This suit was originally filed by two black employees, Luttrell B. Cox and Lloyd R. Hinton, and a white employee, Sherwood Cox, all of whom alleged that the discriminatory effects of the seniority system, and in particular its application in the case of layoffs, constituted a violation of their Title VII rights. Luttrell Cox began employment at Allied as a B Operator in the Production unit in September 1967, but on or about October 22, 1971 he was demoted to the position of janitor, as a result of the above-described layoff rules, and resigned for that reason. It was stipulated that at the time of his demotion, there were employees in Maintenance and Stores with less plant seniority. Plaintiff Hinton started work at Allied on December 2, 1968 in the Production unit, and had advanced to the position of A Operator by May 1971. On or about the same date as Luttrell Cox was demoted, Hinton was laid off as a result of the company's unit seniority policy. Plaintiff Sherwood Cox began employment at Allied in the Production unit on January 20, 1966, and at the time of the institution of this suit was still employed as an A Operator in that unit.

The district court denied plaintiffs' motion to maintain the suit as a class action, a ruling which has not been appealed and which we thus need not consider. The court also dismissed from the suit certain plaintiffs-intervenors whom it had previously admitted as parties, finding their causes of action barred by virtue of their status as signatories to the October 1971 EEOC conciliation agreement containing a clause waiving the charging parties' right to sue either the company or the union in return for those entities' compliance with the provisions of the agreement. On the merits, the district court found that both Luttrell Cox and Lloyd Hinton were qualified for jobs in the Maintenance unit, and that they probably would have transferred into that unit at an early date had it not been for the company's policy of maintaining racially segregated units. Thus, the court concluded, the unit seniority system had discriminated against Luttrell Cox and Hinton, violating their Title VII rights; consequently, the court awarded them both back pay, although refusing to reinstate them or to enjoin the use of the unit seniority system, which it did not find discriminatory per se. ⁴ Finally, the court found that there was no evidence that plaintiff Sherwood Cox's Title VII rights had been violated, and dismissed his claim. Neither Luttrell Cox nor Lloyd Hinton, the successful plaintiffs, has appealed from the district court's failure to enjoin the unit seniority system as modified by the conciliation agreement. Plaintiffs-intervenors Anthony White and Henry Clark, however, have appealed both from the district court's dismissal of them from the case and from its refusal to enjoin the use of the modified unit seniority system. Sherwood Cox has appealed the district court's dismissal of his claim on the merits. We deal with these issues seriatim.

I. The Effect of the Conciliation Agreement.

In its order of December 12, 1973, dismissing the complaints of intervenors Henry Clark and Anthony White, the district court held that as signatories to the October 18, 1971 EEOC conciliation agreement, they were barred from intervention in this case. Part II(C) of the conciliation agreement provides as follows:

"The Charging Parties hereby waive, release, and covenant not to sue Respondent Company and/or Respondent Union with respect to any matters which were or might have been alleged as charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, subject to performance by the Respondents of the promises and representations contained herein. The Commission shall determine whether the Respondents have complied with the terms of this Agreement."

Appellants contended below, and renew their contention here, that neither of them "understandingly and knowingly" waived his right to sue, and argue that the district court should have conducted a hearing on this voluntariness issue. In light of recent decisions by both the Supreme Court and this Court, we agree.

In Alexander v. Gardner-Denver, 415 U.S. 36, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974), the Supreme Court considered and rejected an argument that the petitioner's voluntary submission of an employment discrimination grievance to arbitration, pursuant to the...