United States v. Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Civ. 1967-432.

• Decision Date: 13 April 1970
• Docket Number: Civ. 1967-432.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General, Plaintiff, v. BETHLEHEM STEEL CORPORATION, a corporation, Local 2601, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2602, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2603, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2604, United Steelworkers of America, Local 3144, United Steelworkers of America, and the United Steelworkers of America, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

312 F. Supp. 977

UNITED STATES of America, by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General, Plaintiff, v. BETHLEHEM STEEL CORPORATION, a corporation, Local 2601, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2602, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2603, United Steelworkers of America, Local 2604, United Steelworkers of America, Local 3144, United Steelworkers of America, and the United Steelworkers of America, Defendants.

Civ. 1967-432.

United States District Court, W. D. New York.

April 13, 1970.

K. William O'Connor, Civil Rights Division, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C. (Louis M. Thrasher, Washington, D. C., of counsel), for plaintiff.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore, New York City (Thomas D. Barr, New York City, Hodgson, Russ, Andrews, Woods & Goodyear, Buffalo, N. Y., of counsel), for defendant Bethlehem Steel Corp.

Bredhoff, Gottesman & Cohen, Washington, D. C. (Michael Gottesman, Washington, D. C., of counsel), for defendant United Steel Workers of America.

Thomas E. Krug, Buffalo, N. Y., for defendant Local Unions Nos. 2601, 2602, 2603, 2604 and 3144.

JOHN O. HENDERSON, Chief Judge.

This case involves violations of the equal employment provisions (Title VII) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.). The United States charged the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and, in an amended complaint the United Steelworkers of America and local unions of the United Steelworkers, with engaging in a "pattern or practice" of racial discrimination in their employment practices at Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Lackawanna Plant (hereinafter "Plant").

Most of the facts were stipulated.^* Bethlehem admitted discrimination against Negroes in most phases of its employment practice and much of the relief requested by the government was agreed to and entered as part of the pre-trial order.

Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Lackawanna Plant is its second largest steel plant—the fourth largest in the country. Its normal working force consists of about 18,000 people with an annual payroll of around 135 million (DC Ex. 1, p. 10).

DISCRIMINATION IN GENERAL HIRING AND ASSIGNMENT PROCEDURES

The admitted activity of the company regarding its discriminatory employment practices creates a sorry image.

Until September 1967, the Plant did not uniformly apply objective standards and procedures for the hiring and assignment of new employees. Bethlehem has admitted, for example, that the Plant's employment office falsely raised the general aptitude test scores of some white applicants, hired some white applicants without testing, granted preferential treatment to white applicants for summer employment and, in general, provided employment opportunities to white applicants which were not generally provided to Negro applicants. For example, as mentioned below, the Supervisor of Employment consistently preferred residents of Angola, an all-white suburb, for employment opportunity. The Plant also followed a practice of generally assigning Negroes to the hotter, dirtier and less desirable jobs and departments and not assigning Negroes to other jobs and departments to which white employees have been traditionally assigned. In those instances where Negroes were initially assigned by the personnel department to traditionally white departments, they were discriminatorily rejected by supervisory personnel in those departments. The Supervisor of Employment believed that Negroes could stand heat better than whites.

Further detailing of the admissions contained in the stipulations serves no useful purpose but the court finds as fact the facts as set forth in the stipulations of July 18, 1968 and September 23, 1968. The court will now turn to the specific policies of discrimination which were practiced at the Bethlehem Plant.

It has been admitted that the company discriminated in hiring and assignment of employees until October 1, 1967. Until that time, the employment office at the Plant, through the Supervisor of Employment and the clerk interviewers, had the power to reject applications for employment with almost absolute discretion. Moreover, it is admitted that prior to October 1, 1967, the Plant failed to implement fixed and reasonably objective standards and procedures for hires; the employment officers, by falsely raising aptitude test scores of some white applicants, failing to test some white applicants and otherwise granting preferential treatment to white applicants, provided employment opportunities to white applicants not generally provided to Negro applicants.

Further admitted examples of this follow:

(a) Preferential treatments in new hiring and assignment was accorded by the Supervisor of Employment to residents of Angola and all white suburban areas near Lackawanna. This practice was known to the Office of Management's Representative who is responsible to Plant management who is, in turn, responsible to management at the corporate level.

In the summer of 1966, 26 Negroes out of 1100 summer employees were hired; in 1967, 12 out of 478.

Management and other supervisory personnel of the Plant compiled a "Golden List" designated "AU" (the chemical symbol for gold) which contained the names of a selected group of prospective summer employees who were given preferential treatment including assurance of a job, rapid processing and favorable job assignment. The employment applications of such persons were designated with the symbol "AU." No Negro has ever been on the "Golden List."

(b) The Plant followed a pattern or practice of discrimination in assignment of Negroes and whites to departments between July 2, 1965 and October 1, 1967, by assigning 20% of newly-hired whites and 50% of newly-hired Negroes to five departments of the 82 departments in the Plant as follows: 404 (Brickmason-Labor Unit), 503 (Blast Furnace Sintering), 512 (Coke Oven), 520 (Blast Furnace) and 530 (Steelmaking). These five departments then comprised only 19% of total Plant hourly paid employees but are admittedly among the hotter and dirtier places of employment in the Plant. The assignment of Negroes to these five departments, it is admitted, was in part premised on the view of the employment office that Negroes could stand the heat better than white employees (Stip. pp. 12-13).

(c) Departments which have been traditionally white have remained so because of the Plant's practice which continued to October 1, 1967, of not assigning Negroes to those departments or to the practice of some white supervisory personnel of rejecting Negroes when they were assigned to those departments (Stip. p. 15), prior to October 1, 1967.

The result of Bethlehem's racial assignment has been that Negroes have been involuntarily concentrated in only the following eleven of the Plant's 82 departments: Departments 404 (Brickmason Labor), 406 (Yard), 503 (Sintering Plant), 512 (Coke Ovens), 520 (Blast Furnaces), 530 (Steelmaking), 612 (44"-32" Mills), 620 (Billet Yard), 631 (12"-10"-8" Bar Mills), 660 (28" Mill) and 662 (14" Mill). As of October 21, 1967, these eleven departments contained 83.6% of all Negro employees at the Plant.

Since at least 1961, the union has been aware that most of the Negroes in the Plant were concentrated in the eleven departments and that this concentration resulted from Bethlehem's assignment policies. In short, all the defendants knew of the racially discriminatory assignment of Negroes in the Plant.

In addition to the assignment of most Negroes to the eleven departments, Bethlehem excluded Negroes from the higher paying and cleaner departments of the electrical and mechanical divisions. Bethlehem stipulated that "until September 1967 the Plant pursued a pattern or practice of excluding qualified Negroes from the Electrical Division Departments and had on occasion hired and assigned whites to those departments without regard to their qualifications. As of December 8, 1967, the Division employed 1,364 persons, of whom only eleven were Negro." Similarly, Bethlehem has admitted that "until September 1967, the Plant pursued a pattern or practice of excluding qualified Negroes from certain Mechanical Division Departments. As of December 8, 1967, the Division employed 3,690 persons, of whom 341 were Negro. Two hundred forty-eight of the 341 Negroes were in a non-mechanical laborer unit in the Brickmason Department, the only Mechanical Department which has a large non-mechanical labor unit." The average pay of employees in the Laborer unit of the Brickmason Department is significantly lower than the average pay for craft workers in the same unit.

The union has been aware, since the effective date of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of the pattern of racial assignments to the various departments of the Lackawanna Plant.

SELECTION OF SUPERVISORY EMPLOYEES

Until September 1967, the Plant admitted pursuing a practice of generally excluding Negroes from supervisory positions by basing promotion on essentially subjective determinations. Additionally, in some instances the Plant transferred white employees from traditionally white departments into predominantly Negro departments to assume supervisory positions. The practice has restricted the number of Negro supervisory personnel. In short, defendant Bethlehem engaged in racially discriminatory conduct with regard to hiring, assignment and promotion both prior to and after the effective date of Title VII. These discriminatory employment practices continued up to September 1967 when the United States began its inquiry into Bethlehem's practices.

Nothing could be clearer than that Bethlehem, as it admitted, has engaged in an unlawful pattern and practice of racial discrimination in employment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

RELIEF REQUESTED

The Attorney General asks this court to grant relief in three respects as follows:

(a) the Attorney General seeks to obtain a right of transfer for any Negro in the eleven departments who was or may have been discriminatorily assigned...