Equal Employment Op. Com'n v. American Tel. & Tel. Co.
| Decision Date | 05 October 1973 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 73-149. |
| Citation | 365 F. Supp. 1105 |
| Parties | EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION et al., v. AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
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William H. Brown, III, Chairman, William A. Carey, Gen. Counsel, Charles F. Wilson, Associate Gen. Counsel, Isabelle R. Capello, Asst. Gen. Counsel, David Copus, Washington, D. C., for E.E.O. C.
Richard F. Schubert, Sol. of Labor, Carin Ann Claus, William Kilberg, Associate Sols. of Labor, Louis Weiner, Regional Atty., Washington, D. C., for Dept. of Labor.
J. Stanley Pottinger, David L. Norman, U. S. Asst. Attys. Gen., David L. Rose, James S. Angus, Washington, D. C., for Dept. of Justice.
Robert E. J. Curran, U. S. Atty., E. D.Pa., Charles Ryan, George E. Ashley, Harold S. Levy, Clark G. Redick, New York City, Bernard G. Segal, Irving R. Segal, Kimber E. Vought, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, Philadelphia, Pa., Thompson Powers, James D. Hutchinson, Ronald S. Cooper, Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D. C., for American Tel. and Tel. Co.
Richard H. Markowitz, Markowitz & Kirschner, Philadelphia, Pa., Charles V. Koons, Matthew A. Kane, Kane & Koons, Washington, D. C., for Communications Workers of America.
Presently before the Court is a union's petition — Communications Workers of America (CWA) — challenging the implementation of the largest and most impressive civil rights settlement in the history of this nation. This monumental settlement was hammered out through the mutual, tenacious and lengthy efforts of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EE OC), the United States Department of Labor, the United States Department of Justice, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT & T).1
This settlement is not the typical innocuous Consent Decree replete with pious platitudes that merely imply the parties promise not to discriminate again. Instead, this Consent Decree goes to the very heart of the system — money, goals, timetables, affirmative action programs, employee information programs, compliance monitoring, pay adjustments, new transfers and immediate promotion options.2 Estimates of this landmark settlement are conservatively projected to cost AT & T $38,000,000 — $15,000,000 allocated as back wages to the victims of AT & T's purported discriminatory employment practices, and the remaining $23,000,000 to be expended for additional benefits created by the Decree.3
The parties labored long and ardously for almost two years to work out this Decree. In December 1970, the EEOC initiated administrative litigation before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Thereafter more than sixty days of hearings were conducted, entailing 150 witnesses, hundreds of exhibits and a record in excess of 8,000 pages.
While these efforts were being made to deal with the fundamentals of discrimination, CWA remained persistently aloof until two or three days before the Decree was signed. The aloofness was wilful and by choice, for CWA had been asked to participate in the negotiations leading to the Consent Decree, but it had steadfastly refused to become involved on any of the policy issues.4
Yet now CWA seeks to intervene as a plaintiff in this action pursuant to Rule 24(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure5 and to deny enforcement of the Consent Decree until it can reach an independent agreement with the company on issues affecting wages, hours and conditions of employment. CWA would, furthermore, want to enjoin AT & T from enforcing the provisions of the Consent Decree should such implementation deviate in any way from the practices and procedures in operation under existing collective bargaining agreements negotiated with CWA. Thus, in not too subtle language, CWA seeks to delay the disbursement of $38,000,000 in funds and the implementation of thousands of new opportunities. CWA desires to stop these parties from correcting the deprivations which were sanctioned or tolerated during much of CWA's past association with AT & T.
Predicating its motion for intervention upon its status as the certified or recognized collective bargaining representative for approximately 600,000 non-management employees6 of the named defendants CWA asserts that it is a "person aggrieved" and thus under 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e-5(f)(1)7 it has a statutorily conferred right to intervene unconditionally in this matter. Alternatively, CWA contends that none of the named parties in this suit adequately protect the interest of the union and consequently without intervention CWA's interest, as the exclusive bargaining agent for the aforementioned members and employees, would be substantially impaired and significantly undermined.
During the critical two year period from January 1971 to December 1972, CWA's sole actions before EEOC were limited to registering complaints in behalf of pregnant women employees against whom the union claimed AT & T had discriminatory policies as to maternity leaves. This issue as to pregnant women employees is either not significantly involved in the instant settlement, or if involved is at most minisculely related.
Despite the greatness of our country for many of its noble accomplishments, this nation, like most others, has also tragically failed, until most recently, to assure substantially equal options for women, blacks and many other groups. Where for two years CWA has been begged to enter the administrative arena to negotiate and litigate for the rights of those members who have presumably endured deprivations by reason of their sex or race, should CWA now be able to delay even for one hour the implementation of those rights which the union has consistently abdicated from pressing through the federal administrative options available? While I applaud the union's concern about the rights of pregnant women, its efforts in behalf of pregnant women is no basis to deprive the non-pregnant from having their rights protected. Since the non-pregnant have waited far too long for even a modest implementation of equal employment opportunities, I hold that on the facts of this record CWA cannot impede the enforcement of this very settlement for which it previously refused to seek or litigate.
I am not oblivious to the union's concern and sensitivity about maternity benefits for its female members. The union will be granted leave to intervene in this action to litigate the rights of pregnant female employees of AT & T, but such intervention will not operate to stay in any way the enforcement and implementation of the other provisions of the Consent Decree. Under the facts of this case and in view of the ample safeguards enunciated in the Consent Decree, CWA's motion for intervention as a matter of right is DENIED, except for the limited intervention granted pursuant to 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e-5(f)(1).
When deciding this issue we are approaching uncharted seas without clear markings as to the rights of intervention. Thus in making this ruling I am not attempting to spell out for all time to come any definitive guidelines as to the right to intervene for those factual milieus which are significantly different than the present record. My holding must be limited to the unique facts of the instant litigation history, with consideration given to the extraordinary efforts which were made for almost two years to get CWA to act with the EEOC to participate in the administrative process.
Any exposition of the legal questions herein posited will be more clearly illuminated and enhanced when the chronology of events preceding this litigation is recited and the Court's rulings today are placed in a proper factual, as well as legal, perspective.
The CWA advances arguments of its purported desire now (at this late date) to participate in the formulation, fashioning and effectuation of remedies which would bring AT & T and its subsidiary companies into complete compliance with the relevant federal statutes. These arguments, though vigorously pressed, are in no slight degree belied and negatived by its past conduct and actions. As the facts are divulged one gleans from the record that the soundness of CWA's legal position, as repects the timely intervention under Rule 24(a)(2), cannot entirely be divorced and isolated from the union's consistent refusals to participate actively and to become involved extensively in the lengthy negotiations of the various Government officials and AT & T culminating in this historic civil rights settlement on January 18, 1973.
As the record conclusively establishes and as was previously noted at the outset, notwithstanding the repeated pleas, communicated by EEOC and other agencies, imploring CWA to undertake a more aggressive role during the two years of administrative litigation, it was not until January 16, 1973, two days before the entry of the Consent Decree that CWA manifested any indication that it might be abandoning its announced policy of non-intervention. In a letter of that date from Joseph A. Beirne, President of CWA, to Rex R. Reed, Vice-President, Labor Relations for AT & T, CWA demanded "immediate negotiations to commence at the American Telephone and Telegraph level" with regard to such matters as a transfer plan program, the job bidding and posting program and the promotional pay plan program, all items which had been subjects of the Government sessions.8 Actually, it can be more correctly observed that CWA's demand for immediate negotiations with AT & T is also consonant with a finding of CWA's continuing preference for non-intervention in the Government proceedings. From the general tenor of the January 16th letter, it was demonstrably evident that CWA preferred to maintain its status as the exclusive bargaining agent for the employees of AT &...
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