United States v. HK Porter Company

• Decision Date: 30 December 1968
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 67-363.
• Citation: 296 F. Supp. 40
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General, Plaintiff, v. H. K. PORTER COMPANY, Inc., a corporation, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, an unincorporated association, and Local Union No. 2250, United Steelworkers of America, an unincorporated association, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

296 F. Supp. 40

UNITED STATES of America, by Ramsey CLARK, Attorney General, Plaintiff, v. H. K. PORTER COMPANY, Inc., a corporation, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, an unincorporated association, and Local Union No. 2250, United Steelworkers of America, an unincorporated association, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 67-363.

United States District Court N. D. Alabama, S. D.

December 30, 1968.

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Ramsey Clark, Atty. Gen., Stephen J. Pollak, Asst. Atty. Gen., Macon L. Weaver, U. S. Atty., Frank M. Dunbaugh, Thomas Ewald, Alfred Blumrosen and Andrew J. Ruzicho, Attys., Dept. of Justice, for plaintiff.

Lucien D. Gardner, Jr., William F. Gardner, Drayton T. Scott and Drayton Nabors, Jr., Cabaniss, Johnston, Gardner & Clark, Birmingham, Ala., for H. K. Porter Company.

Jerome A. Cooper, Cooper, Mitch & Crawford, Birmingham, Ala., for United Steelworkers of America.

FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW, AND OPINION

ALLGOOD, District Judge.

Invoking section 707 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,¹ the plaintiff brought this action against the H. K. Porter Company (herein referred to as "the Company") alleging a pattern or practice of resistance at the Company's Connors Steel plant in Birmingham, Alabama. The United Steelworkers of America and its Local Union No. 2250 (herein collectively referred to as "the Union") were thereafter joined as defendants pursuant to order of the court as parties needed for just adjudication under Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

It has been observed with some truth that judges are too busy to write short opinions and therefore write long ones. At the outset, therefore, the court should say that the length of this opinion is in direct relation to the substantial, complex, and important dimensions of the case, both in the proceedings before trial, in the trial itself, and in study by the court of the evidence and the briefs following completion of the trial.

The pre-trial proceedings included not only enough use of the discovery procedures to fill several court files but the holding of two pre-trial conferences as well. The first pre-trial conference was adjourned by the court at the joint request of counsel to permit the preparation of a proposed order defining the issues of fact to be tried. When this was not productive of agreement, the court held another conference and at that time entered a pre-trial order based upon the proposed order which had been originally prepared by the plaintiff.²

Moreover, when the matters covered during the trial raised issues which had not been set forth in the pre-trial order, the court allowed their introduction in the interest of full and final adjudication and has considered them as issues in the case as if they had been embodied in the pre-trial formulation of the issues.

The case was tried before the court on eight days between August 12 and August 21, 1968 in a comprehensive and exhaustive presentation of the evidence. Thereafter, following several extensions of time requested by the plaintiff, the post-trial briefs were filed in November.

Through a pre-trial brief filed by the Company, several briefs filed by the plaintiff during the trial, and the post-trial briefs, the court has had the benefit of comprehensive briefing. It has similarly been most helpful to the court in analyzing the legislative history of Title VII in context to have been provided both with photocopies of the pages of the Congressional Record setting forth the prepared explanations and analyses of the provisions of this title and with the compilation of the legislative history which has been prepared and published by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.³

I. FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

Based on careful observation of the witnesses and consideration of their testimony during the trial and on detailed study of the evidence and the briefs since the trial, the court is firm in entering the findings of fact and the conclusions of law which follow therefrom.

Before doing so, the court should comment on the approach which has been taken in deciding this case.

The court is aware of the fact that through the litigation of section 707 cases, the Attorney General is seeking to establish general propositions regarding the application of Title VII to certain employment situations and actions.⁴ But while recognizing the desirability for enforcement purposes of having general propositions answered by the judiciary in categorical terms one way or the other, the court is convinced that both the proper administration of the statute and the goal of equality in employment opportunities will best be served by the essentially pragmatic approach of judging each case in the light of its own facts and the actual problems to be resolved. As the Supreme Court said in declining the Government's request for the promulgation of definitive standards in the context of a tax statute, "while the principles urged by the Government may, in nonabsolute form as crystallizations of experience, prove persuasive to the trier of facts in a particular case, neither they, nor any more detailed statement than has been made, can be laid down as a matter of law * * * the question here remains basically one of fact, for determination on a case-by-case basis."⁵

Moreover, the mechanistic approach urged by the Attorney General would be manifestly incompatible with the traditional principle of equity jurisdiction that decrees are to be molded to the circumstances of the particular case. The thought expressed by Justice Douglas is a sound proposition although set forth in a dissenting opinion, and it speaks equally to the subject here: "If the federal court is to be merely an automation stamping the papers an Attorney General presents, the judicial function rises to no higher level than an IBM machine. Those who grew up with equity and know its great history should never tolerate that mechanical conception."⁶

The court further believes that some of the concepts which have been urged as the solutions in this area provide more academic interest than practical answers to actual problems. The concepts of "status quo", "rightful place", and "freedom now" provoke stimulating thought, but they are, after all, no more than labels which can too easily lend themselves to serving as substitutes for critical analysis or, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, as "anodynes for the pains of reasoning."⁷

For these reasons, the findings, conclusions, and order which are here entered are based on the particular evidence of this case and not on categorical answers to the broad propositions urged by the Attorney General.

The court will set forth these findings and resulting conclusions in the order which provides the most logical development of the facts in their entirety. This order of analysis should therefore not be taken as an expression of the relative importance of any subject or fact in the case.

To expedite reference to specific subjects, the court will prepare and attach to this opinion an index of the subjects herein analyzed.

A. General:

1. (a) The pattern or practice averred by the complaint and amended complaints is alleged to have been engaged in at the Company's Connors Steel plant located in this judicial district, and the employment records relating thereto are maintained and administered in this district.

(b) The Attorney General is authorized to have brought this action by section 707 of Title VII, the Company and the Union are both within the coverage of the provisions of Title VII, and the court has jurisdiction of the parties and the subject matter of this action.

2. The Company is engaged at its Connors Steel plant in the production of steel products, consisting primarily of bars, angles, and shapes. Described in brief outline, the production process follows the sequence of melting raw materials in electric furnaces to produce molten metal, casting the molten metal into billets by means of a four story high continuous casting facility known as the tower (which was installed in 1964 as one of the first such facilities in the country), rolling the billets on the rolling mills to the specified sizes and shapes, and then fabricating and finishing the products.

3. (a) The jobs and the employees which are the subject of this case are primarily in the production and maintenance bargaining unit, for which the Union is and has been the collective bargaining representative since the early 1940's. The only non-supervisory employees who are not within the production and maintenance unit are the guards, supply house employees, and clerical personnel.

(b) There are some 739 production and maintenance employees, of which 418 are white and 321 are Negro.

4. The Union contract which was in effect at the time that this case was tried was a three year agreement which had become effective on October 1, 1965 and expired on September 1, 1968. Since then, the Company and the Union negotiated and entered into a new contract which became effective on September 1, 1968.⁸

5. (a) The operations of the Company's plant are set up on a departmental basis in accordance with the type of work performed by each department and in common with the organizational structure of plants in the steel industry generally. The departments, and their basic functions, are as follows, in alphabetical order:

(1) Brickmason, which relines and maintains the furnaces, ladles, tundishes, and related equipment used in the melting and casting operations.

(2) Building Maintenance, which maintains the plant buildings and facilities.

(3) Cold Draw, which produces cold drawn bars to a close tolerance finish by drawing or pulling semi-finished bars through dies.

(4)...