White v. Carolina Paperboard Corp.
| Decision Date | 23 September 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 75-2266,75-2266 |
| Citation | 564 F.2d 1073 |
| Parties | 16 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 44, 15 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 7843 Willie WHITE, John Lowery, Jake Taylor, Blair Huntley, Stephen Shipman, and Charlie Hudson, Appellees, v. CAROLINA PAPERBOARD CORPORATION, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
John O. Pollard, Charlotte, N. C. (Blakeney, Alexander & Machen, Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for appellant.
J. LeVonne Chambers, Charlotte, N. C. (Louis L. Lesesne, Jr., Chambers, Stein, Ferguson & Becton, Charlotte, N. C., Jack Greenberg and Barry Goldstein, New York City, on brief), for appellees.
Before BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge, MARKEY, Chief Judge, * and WIDENER, Circuit Judge.
Having complied with the procedural requirements of Title VII, 1 Willie White, John Lowery, Jake Taylor, Blair Huntley, Stephen Shipman, and Charlie Hudson, black employees at Carolina Paper Board Corporation (the company), brought this class action The company is a North Carolina corporation which manufactures paperboard from waste paper. At the time of trial, it employed 83 employees, 24 of whom were black. The district court found that prior to 1971 all of the company's black employees were assigned to the beaterroom, receiving, shipping, carpentry, and yard crew; there were no white employees in these departments; and whites filled the better paying jobs of finishers, tenders, converters, screenmen, oiler-boilermen, truck drivers, maintenancemen, electricians, foremen and supervisors.
2 against the company for discriminatory hiring, job assigning, and promoting practices contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The district court found the company perpetrated presently its past discriminatory practices against black employees by "assigning . . . (them) to limited job positions and permitting transfers or promotions to the traditionally white jobs only from job positions black employees have not been allowed to fill. . . ."
Following or during an investigation by the EEOC in 1971, the company offered to each black employee a job as finisher, which job position, as will be later seen, is the key to much promotion within the company. The named plaintiffs and class members refused, for various reasons, some because they were then too old to perform the strenuous physical labor which the job requires. The company additionally employed two black finishers in 1973 and three white beatermen in 1974. Also in 1974, it promoted to tender a black employee, who later requested and was reassigned to a finisher's position. Nevertheless, at the time of trial, many departments were nearly as racially-identifiable as before 1971.
To remedy the present effects of past discrimination, the court, among other things, ordered the company, in production and maintenance, to post all vacancies, to list employee seniority, and to submit to the court objective standards for job qualifications. 3 The company does not challenge these rulings on appeal.
The order further required the company to offer each plaintiff and class member an opportunity to transfer to any production or maintenance job upon any vacancy on the basis of companywide seniority, and to permit the employee to return to his former job for a period of 90 days if he should prove unable to perform the new job; to "red circle" the salary or wages of any employee who transferred under this order to a job paying less than his former position until he could promote to a job with the same or higher pay than his former position. We affirm these provisions of the order, for reasons made apparent in our opinion. 4
Other parts of the order required the company to promote or hire one black in The district court awarded back pay at an "average annual rate of $2,443.35 which represents the difference in average earnings between black and white employees (except some salaried positions) for the applicable period plus six percent per annum" and "front pay" of one-half that sum ($1,221.67 per year) "for a period of three years as anticipated loss of earnings until the employee can be placed in his rightful position." We modify the award of back pay as described below.
supervisory and foreman positions for every other employee hired or offered such position until black employees hold 25 percent of such positions; to reclassify job positions held by black working foremen to include all responsibilities previously required of whites in such positions, as well as privileges. We reverse these provisions with one exception.
The company's paperboard manufacturing process starts when beatermen dump waste paper into pulper tanks, where a rotor device grinds the waste paper, mixes it with water, and turns it into a slurry of 95 percent water and 5 percent waste paper. The slurry then passes through a stainless steel pipe into large storage tanks. From there the slurry is pumped through Jordan Head Boxes, where the head beaterman, following the instructions of his foreman, routes his stock into particular Jordans according to the grade of paper he is making. As the paper stock runs through the Jordans, protruding bars chop the stock into finer, smaller and more refined particles. From there, the machine tender, at the controls of the machine head box, routes the stock into one of four separate systems, and regulates the flow of the paper stock into it. In each of these systems the stock flows through fan pumps, where more water is added, and then flows into one of seven vats. The vats are the first phase of the paper machine, a machine 98 feet long.
A machine tender regulates the flow of the stock through rotating screens in the vats which suck out any unwanted debris from the slurry. Cylinders at the top of each vat dip into and catch up some of the paper stock. A continuous running felt passing over the seven cylinders picks up paper stock and carries it through the succeeding sections of the paper machine. As the felt passes over each cylinder, a new layer of paper stock adheres to it, so that after passing the seven vats, the paper product is a seven ply sheet. See Fig. 1.
NOTE: OPINION CONTAINS TABLE OR OTHER DATA THAT IS NOT VIEWABLE
At this point the stock is ten percent paper and 90 percent water. The process of extracting the water and drying the product then begins. The felt runs over two extractors which remove some of the water. A second felt meets the product from underneath and helps carry it to two presses. Here rollers apply pressure to the stock The front edge of the paper sheet does not feed automatically into the second press, but falls into the pit below. The foreman must catch the edge as it comes through the first press and throw it up into the nip of the second press. Once so threaded the sheet will move continuously into the second press until it tears or breaks. When it breaks, the foreman must tear completely across the sheet and re-feed it into the second press. See Fig. 2.
between the felts, while vacuum suction devices suck up excess water.
NOTE: OPINION CONTAINS TABLE OR OTHER DATA THAT IS NOT VIEWABLE
When the sheet comes out of the second press, the foreman and finishers thread it through each of the 64 dryers. The back tender (with foreman or finishers) then threads the paper sheet into each of the seven calender stacks. All of this threading is a task requiring skill because the paper sheet,100 inches wide, is continuously moving as it comes out of the preceding section of the paper machine. Ideally, the task is only performed at the startup of a production run. On an average, however, the paper sheet will break or tear seven or eight times during the day and will then require additional threading. As the sheet leaves the calender stacks, it is threaded into the slitter and cutter, the final section of the paper machine. The back tender sets the cutter's continuously revolving knives to cut the sheet into proper sizes. See Fig. 3.
NOTE: OPINION CONTAINS TABLE OR OTHER DATA THAT IS NOT VIEWABLE
After passing through the slitter and cutter, the product is dumped into large troughs called "boxes." Finishers reach in, pull out the finished product, and stack it on the skids for shipping. While doing this, the finishers inspect the paper for the innumerable flaws, such as wet spots or holes. If there are flaws, the finishers notify the Two shipping helpers load the product on trucks for shipping to customers. The shipping foreman handles all paper work, making sure customers have the proper orders. He posts delivery assignments for the truck drivers and sees to it that the trucks are properly loaded.
back tender, who decides whether to save it or stack it for reuse.
The heart of the plant is the paper machine. The function of the other departments is to support production on the machine by keeping the machine in good working order, by shipping the finished product, by receiving the raw waste paper, etc.
The company has always awarded promotions on the paper machine according to the following line of progression:
New Finisher Entry Level
Class C Finisher
Class B Finisher
Class A Finisher
Head Finisher (Assistant Tender)
Back Tender
Machine Tender
Foreman
No particular skill or experience is required at the entry level of new finisher, but the experience and learning at each stage of the progression is cumulative, preparing the employee for the next stage. Because no black employee had been assigned to the entry level job of new finisher before 1971, they were deprived an opportunity to be promoted to the higher paying jobs in the progression line above set forth.
The district court struck down the line of progression on the machine for the sole reason that the employees trained for their respective positions on-the-job. We think the reason is insufficient, and keeping in mind that a district court should be...
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