Rodriguez v. East Texas Motor Freight
| Decision Date | 25 November 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 73-2801,73-2801 |
| Citation | 505 F.2d 40 |
| Parties | 8 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1246, 8 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 9811 Jesse RODRIGUEZ, Sadrach G. Perez and Modesto Herrera, on their own behalf and on behalf of those similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. EAST TEXAS MOTOR FREIGHT, Southern Conference of Teamsters and Teamsters Local657, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Mario Obledo, Sanford Rosen, Mexican-Amer. Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., San Francisco, Cal., Ed Idar, Jr., Jim Heidelberg, MALDEF, San Antonio, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Debra Millenson, EEOC, Washington, D.C., amicus curiae.
Theo. F. Weiss, San Antonio, Tex., Richard C. Hotvedt, Harry A. Rissetto, Washington, D.C., George E. Seay, William C. Strock, Dallas, Tex., for East Texas Motor Freight.
Edward W. Penshorn, Bradford F. Miller, San Antonio, Tex., for Teamsters Local Union 657.
G. Wm. Baab, L. N. D. Wells, Jr., Hal Gillespie, Dallas, Tex., for Southern Conference of Teamsters.
Before WISDOM, AINSWORTH and GODBOLD, Circuit Judges.
In this employment discrimination case the plaintiffs-appellants attack two ubiquitous practices in the trucking industry: (1) the trucking companies' requirement that 'city drivers' resign from their city driver jobs before applying for the more lucrative and soughtafter 'road' or 'line driver' * positions, and (2) the companies' rule preventing city drivers from carrying their seniority to road driver jobs. The plaintiffs, Mexican-American city drivers for East Texas Motor Freight (ETMF), brought this action below as a class action, contending that these facially neutral practices of ETMF and the defendant union organizations perpetuate the effects of past discriminatory hiring practices and thus violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 /1/ and 42 U.S.C. 1981. / 2/ The district court found that the cause of action was inappropriate for a class action, and that none of the defendants had violated Title VII or Section 1981. We reverse.
In the trucking industry, 'road' or 'line driver' is considered a separate job classification from 'city, pick-up and delivery driver'. Road drivers for ETMF drive 10-speed tractors with semi-trailers, carrying freight among the 52 ETMF terminals in 19 states. Road drivers work long hours, and often spend long periods of time away from home, but they have the prestige driving job in the trucking industry, and they generally bring home the highest pay. Freight brought to a terminal by a road driver is unloaded and reloaded onto other trucks, either onto another tractortrailer, or onto a 'bobtail', a truck with the body and engine mounted on the same chassis. A city driver then delivers the merchandise locally.
In conformance with the practice in the trucking industry generally, ETMF 'domiciles' road drivers at only some of its terminals: those in cities that are relay points equidistant between major centers, and those in 'head haul' cities, cities at the end of a line of service that generate a significant amount of freight to other points in the company's system. In Texas ETMF has six terminals that domicile road drivers, and fifteen terminals that do not. 3 ETMF has city drivers at all terminals.
The primary responsibility for hiring drivers, both city and road, in the ETMF system rests with the manager at the terminal where a vacancy occurs. The manager interviews applicants, reviews their qualifications, and makes recommendations to officials at the corporate headquarters in Dallas. Although the Dallas officials must approve each applicant for employment, the terminal manager makes the affirmative decision to hire. The unions have no responsibility for hiring.
ETMF's qualifications for road drivers are more stringent than for city drivers. City drivers must be at least 21 years old and have at least one year pick-up and delivery experience. Road drivers must be at least 27 years old and have three years 'immediate prior line haul road experience'. Both city and road drivers face a battery of other requirements involving driving, work, credit, and police records. They must be familiar with Department of Transportation regulations, have a high school education or the equivalent, and hold a valid commercial drivers license. Finally, both city and road drivers must pass physical, written, and driving examinations. Everett E. Cloer, ETMF's Vice President in charge of industrial relations testified to the importance of driving tests for road drivers: 4 Counsel for the parties stipulated that the line driver requirements are nondiscriminatory.
City drivers and road drivers are covered by different collective bargaining agreements. The defendant-appellee Local 657 has a collective bargaining agreement with ETMF covering city divers at ETMF's San Antonio terminal. Local 657 represents no road drivers of ETMF. The defendant-appellee Southern Conference of Teamsters, a delegate body of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs and Warehousemen and Helpers of America, is made up of representatives from the affiliated Locals in ten southern states. Separate collective bargaining agreements for city and road drivers are drawn by the Southern Conference and negotiated by the Conference with trucking company representatives. Then the agreements are passed down to the Locals to be approved and made part of the contracts between the Locals and the trucking companies.
Since 1954 ETMF has followed a 'notransfer' policy, prohibiting the transfer of drivers between city and road driver classifications and between terminals. 5 Under the policy, in order for a city driver to obtain a position as a road driver, he must resign his city driver job and apply for a road driver slot. He thereby forfeits all accumulated seniority. In effect, he stands on no better footing in applying for a road driver job than a complete stranger to the company. For the purposes of strengthening his application, he gains no 'credit' for his years as a city driver. And if his bid to be a line driver fails, there is no guarantee that he will be rehired as a city driver. ETMF's policy against transfers is complemented by the fact that under collective bargaining contracts between ETMF and Local unions, including the defendant Local 657, city drivers who transfer to the road do not carry over their 'competitive-status' seniority, that is, seniority for job bidding and lay off purposes. 6 Under separate collective bargaining agreements for road and city drivers, competitive-status seniority runs from the time an employee enters a particular collective bargaining unit. Transfer is not expressly prohibited, but it is not expressly permitted either, and the agreements have been universally interpreted to prohibit the carryover of seniority from one classification to another.
For thirty days in January and February 1972, to ease morale problems among its city drivers who wanted to become road drivers, ETMF relaxed its no-transfer policy and permitted city drivers to transfer to line jobs, if they could qualify. 7 During this period, although all other requirements were maintained, the requirement of three years line driving experience was waived. The modification did not affect the dual seniority system established by the separate collective bargaining agreements. Any city driver transferring to the road under the modified policy still lost his seniority for job bidding and lay off purposes. Moreover, the one-timeonly change in policy opened the possibility of transfer only to those city drivers who worked out of terminals domiciling road drivers; the restrictions on interterminal transfers remained in effect. In the Southern Conference area 220 city drivers showed an interest in transferring under the temporary policy, and 35 to 50 city drivers tried out; five succeeded in transferring to road driver jobs. 8
Against the history of these policies must be juxtaposed one crucial set of facts. The parties stipulated that before 1970 East Texas Motor Freight had never employed a black or Mexican-American as a road driver in the Texas-Southern Conference area. 9 ETMF's road driver force in that area numbered approximately 180, all white/anglo drivers. After charges were filed by plaintiff Jesse Rodriguez with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on August 20, 1970, the company hired three Mexican-American road drivers in El Paso. By the time of trial, the company had still not hired a single black road driver in Texas. In comparison, approximately 35 percent of ETMF's city drivers in Texas are black or Mexican-American. Of a total of 575 city drivers for ETMF in the state, 111 are Spanish-surnamed, 95 are black, and 369 are anglo.
The three named plaintiffs, Jesse Rodriguez, Sadrach Perez, and Modesto Herrera, are Mexican-American city drivers at ETMF's San Antonio terminal. With the exception of one road driver who temporarily worked out of San Antonio in 1970, ETMF road drivers have never been domiciled in San Antonio. San Antonio city drivers were therefore not able to take advantage of the temporary modification of the no-transfer rule in the winter of 1972. Perez was hired as a city driver in 1959, Herrera was hired in 1964, and Rodriguez was hired in 1965. They stipulated that they were employed at the San Antonio Terminal without regard to race, color, or national origin. Each is a member of Local 657 and the Southern Conference.
Although none of the named plaintiffs made written application for a line driver job until 1970, Herrera made verbal inquiries about...
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