E.E.O.C. v. Hiram Walker & Sons, Inc.
| Decision Date | 24 July 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-1588,84-1588 |
| Parties | 38 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 820, 38 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 35,561 EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Plaintiff-Appellee, and Delores Agee, Madeline Aiello, Edna Braten, Laura Bury, Neva Buttell, Helen Claver, Charolette Dickerson, Leslie Drummer, Gladys Dwyer, Mary Ebell, Margaret Evans, Pearl Fice, Nora Flynn, Rose Genusa, Annie Gibbons, Freda Goldsmith, Agnes Hall, Rose Harvey, Virgil Hayes, Doris Hornung, Harriet Hutton, Clara Jenkens, Mary Kaufmann, Mary Lafferty, Clara Maricle, Eleanor Marinich, Amelia Monroe, Emma Lou Moore, Ruth Osborn, Ann Pitcher, Julia Ross, Lavon Schuster, Margaret Thompson, Millie Wageman, Josephine Walker, Ann Williams, Grace Wort, Jessie Wright, and Geneva Wytcherly, Intervenors-Appellants, v. HIRAM WALKER & SONS, INC., and Distillery Workers of America, Local 55, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Kevin W. Lyons, Peoria, Ill., for defendants-appellees.
Peggy R. Mastroianni, E.E.O.C., Washington, D.C., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before WOOD and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and PELL, Senior Circuit Judge.
Appellants, thirty-nine former employees of Hiram Walker & Sons, Inc. (Walker or the company), appeal from a consent decree entered in settlement of a sex discrimination in employment suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the company. The district court permitted appellants to intervene for purposes of appeal. The issue on appeal is whether the district court abused its discretion when it approved the decree, which grants limited relief to the class of employees as a whole and virtually no relief to those employees, many of them charging parties, who allegedly endured the most discrimination.
Two sets of charges gave rise to the present litigation. In 1975, 123 female employees filed charges against Walker, the National Organization of Women filed a charge on behalf of certain current and retired female employees, and the employees' union, Local 55 of the Distillery Workers of America, filed similar charges. All 1975 charges related to alleged discrimination in the provision of pension benefits and sought, as remedies, the recalculation of those benefits. In 1977, 113 female employees filed charges against both Walker and Local 55 alleging discrimination in job assignment and exclusion, transfer and promotions, layoffs, and provision of certain benefits. The 1977 charges requested back pay relief in addition to other remedies.
An EEOC investigation found reasonable cause to believe that all the allegations were true and, after conciliation attempts failed, the EEOC brought suit against both the company and the union under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e (1976). The complaint alleged that defendants engaged in a variety of unlawful employment practices that discriminated against women employees because of their sex. Defendants denied all allegations and asserted numerous affirmative defenses to the charges. Settlement negotiations occurred over a period of several years and, by the time the parties agreed to the consent decree in 1983, they had completed practically all relevant discovery. The district court granted preliminary approval of the proposed consent decree and directed that the parties send notice to the affected individuals. At the subsequent fairness hearing in late 1983, the court heard arguments against approval from numerous objectors, some appearing pro se and some represented by counsel, and arguments in support of the decree from both the EEOC and Walker. In a comprehensive, thirty-six page memorandum opinion and order, the district court approved the final consent decree. The court then allowed those employees who had objected to the decree to intervene for purposes of appeal.
The EEOC and Walker present dramatically different interpretations of the facts underlying the allegedly discriminatory practices. The undisputed facts are that Walker divided its Peoria, Illinois, plant, since closed by Walker in 1981, into ten divisions, with a total work crew of between 479 and 889 employees. In the 1981 shutdown agreement between the company and Local 55, each employee who, because of a layoff, had received less than a full year's pension credit for any year between 1973 and 1981 had pension benefits redetermined as if the employee had worked the entire year.
According to the EEOC, prior to 1965, Walker classified all jobs as either "men's jobs" or "women's jobs." Then, after passage of Title VII, the new collective bargaining agreement split one of the plant divisions in two, thus creating a new division that encompassed all those jobs formerly designated as women's jobs, the lowest paying positions in the plant. The women employees, largely confined to production aspects of the plant's activities, were most directly affected by fluctuations in output, rendering them highly susceptible to layoff. When layoffs occurred, an employee had the option of taking an "involuntary transfer" to another position, but both the company and the union encouraged women employees to sign a written "decline of transfer" form, revocable only in writing. The company generally considered women to be incapable of performing men's jobs, and, if a woman chose to take an involuntary transfer, the company invariably assigned her to a physically difficult job, thereby discouraging further transfers. The frequent layoffs had a substantial detrimental effect upon the pension benefits earned by female employees, because benefits were based upon both years of service and salary. Not until 1973 did Walker make initial assignments of women to jobs other than the traditionally women's jobs; in 1975, the company ceased using the written decline of transfer forms; and, by 1977, the company had hired a significant number of women into traditional men's jobs.
During the course of discovery and settlement negotiations, it became apparent that the EEOC and Walker had fundamental disagreements about numerous legal issues. One disputed issue was whether the 1975 pension-related charges or the more expansive 1977 charges triggered the right to back pay. The importance of that issue rests in the fact that Title VII imposes a two-year statute of limitations upon the recovery of back pay. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-5(g). A closely related issue was whether the pension relief sought pursuant to the 1975 charges was in the nature of back pay relief, as the company contended, or, as the EEOC maintained, injunctive relief, for which there is no statute of limitations. Thirdly, Walker claimed that only its initial assignments of women employees were subject to judicial review. Because Illinois has an applicable statute, any claimant had to file an EEOC charge within 300 days of the alleged discrimination, and Walker's interpretation would thus greatly limit the number of women who could receive monetary relief. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-5(e). The EEOC, on the other hand, maintained that Walker had engaged in a continuing violation of Title VII, consequently tolling the 300-day limit. Finally, the company also argued that the EEOC could not establish that pension relief was available for any period before 1973, the EEOC having conceded that the shutdown agreement granted all pension benefits potentially obtainable through litigation from 1973 until the plant closed. The company maintained that the individual employees caused all adverse effects upon their pension benefits by declining to exercise their right to an involuntary transfer, as opposed to layoff.
The proposed consent decree, approved by the district court over the objections of appellants, provided two basic types of relief. The settlement limited pension relief to those women hired prior to 1965 who had demonstrated some willingness to take a men's job after 1965. Apparently, the time limit was a result of the elimination of explicit male and female job classifications beginning with the 1965 collective bargaining agreement, and the requirement of a demonstrable willingness to take a men's job limited relief to those who clearly suffered as a result of the alleged discrimination. Using these criteria, eight women hired before 1960 received two additional years of credited service for purposes of determining their pension benefits, and eight women hired between 1960 and 1965 received one additional year of service.
The monetary relief, called "Initial Assignment Relief" by the parties, awarded $151,200, divided in amounts ranging from $900 to $5,850, to fifty-eight women hired before 1977 and $14,400, in amounts ranging from $225 to $900, to twenty-four women hired in 1977 or 1978. Only women who, beginning in 1973--the earliest possible cut-off date if the two-year statute of limitations for back pay applied--took involuntary transfers instead of layoffs were eligible for initial assignment relief. Finally, all charging parties who received no specific relief under the decree would share in any awarded sums that were not disbursed because of the death of or inability to locate the designated recipient.
The objections to the proposed decree took a wide variety of forms, although there were three principal objections. The most prevalent objection below, and the one most strenuously urged on appeal, was that those women who suffered the most effects from Walker's discrimination for the longest period received little or no relief. Indeed, of the 123 women who filed 1975 charges with respect to pension benefits, only sixteen received relief, and none of the longest-employed women received initial assignment relief. A second objection, related to pension benefits, compared the level of the objectors' newly adjusted benefits to the benefits received by men hired contemporaneously with the objectors. The parties do not dispute that the...
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