Williams v. Waste Management of Illinois
| Decision Date | 24 March 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-1256.,03-1256. |
| Parties | Travis WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WASTE MANAGEMENT OF ILLINOIS, INCORPORATED d/b/a Waste Management of Springfield, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Susan L. Walker (argued), Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
John A. Ybarra (argued), Littler Mendelson, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before MANION, KANNE, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
Travis Williams sued his former employer, Waste Management of Illinois, Inc. d/b/a Waste Management of Springfield, for race-based harassment, discrimination, and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The district court granted Waste Management's summary-judgment motion, and we affirm.
Waste Management hired Williams, an African American, as a laborer on June 12, 2000. Williams worked at Waste Management's Springfield, Illinois location, which housed two facilities — a machine shop (which was part of the company's hauling operation) and a transfer station. The machine shop performed repairs and maintenance on trucks and other equipment, and the transfer station collected trash from trucks then routed the trash to other trucks for hauling to a landfill located in Taylorville, Illinois. The Taylorville landfill was another Waste Management operation. Offices located at the Springfield site were connected to the machine shop by a common employee break room. The employee bulletin board was located in the break room, and the postings included the company's human relations hotline telephone number.
While most employees at the Springfield site were assigned to either the hauling operation or the transfer station, Williams was assigned to both. His primary responsibilities involved grooming the machine shop's and transfer station's shared grounds using a lawnmower and weed eater. He would also pick up trash blown off the trucks, direct truck traffic, and fill in for transfer-station employees on heavy equipment as needed.
Williams was interviewed and hired by Roy Whittinghill, who was Caucasian, and Antonio Curren, who was African American. They served as his co-supervisors after hire. Whittinghill was the district manager for the Springfield transfer station, the Pana transfer station, and the landfill in Taylorville, and divided his time among these operations. Thus, he was not always on site to direct Williams and observe his work. Curren, in contrast, was a district manager for the hauling operation, worked full time at the Springfield facility and was always available to Williams. Williams testified that he could find Curren when he needed him, that he saw him daily, and that he was approachable. Williams said he felt the same about Whittinghill — that he was approachable and someone he could talk to.
About a month into his employment, Williams left work early after exposure to poison ivy resulted in a rash. Curren gave him permission to leave on the condition that he bring back a doctor's note. Williams did not comply with Curren's direction because he couldn't afford a doctor's visit. When he reported for work the following day without a note, Curren sent him home. Williams didn't return, and the company terminated him pursuant to its policy after he was a no call, no show for three days.
Whittinghill telephoned Williams after his termination to inquire why he had abandoned his job. Whittinghill rehired Williams after he explained he felt he wasn't allowed to return unless he could produce a note, and he couldn't produce a note because of the expense.
Curren agreed to Williams's return, but only if Whittinghill took full management responsibility of Williams. Curren felt Williams was a poor employee — specifically, that he worked too slowly and had attendance issues. Williams, it appears, was unaware of the shift in supervisory roles and continued to seek help and direction from Curren. Curren, for his part, continued to make himself available to Williams and to direct his work when Whittinghill was off site.
Although Williams got on well with his supervisors, he believes he was harassed by his coworkers due to his race. Specifically, two Caucasian mechanics named Eddie Cleeton and Virgil Beckum were named by Williams. Cleeton and Beckum worked for the hauling company in the machine shop where Williams's lawn equipment and supplies were stored. Their job responsibilities included making repairs to Williams's lawn equipment as needed. Their immediate supervisor was Mark Baccadutre, who was also Caucasian.
On Williams's first day at work, he took his morning break with Cleeton and Beckum in the shop. Although the designated employee break room was connected to the shop, the two mechanics tended to take their breaks in the shop itself around a radio, often along with another Caucasian employee, Lee Webster, and sometimes supervisor Curren. After the break, Beckum sang songs that Williams didn't like, which prompted him to ask Beckum if he was prejudiced. Beckum said he was, making a gesture with his hand to show how much, and asked Williams how he was with "Black" jokes. Williams told Beckum that he wouldn't tolerate them and would appreciate it if he didn't tell them in his presence. Beckum shrugged his shoulders, said "hmmmmm," and walked away. According to Williams, although other employees were working in the area, he doesn't know whether they heard the exchange.
That same morning, after break, Cleeton told Williams that he looked like the gorilla that worked at Chuck E. Cheese, then said something about a monkey, which Williams took to be a racist joke. Williams then told Cleeton, like he did Beckum, that he wouldn't tolerate such jokes and asked Cleeton to keep racist comments to himself. Cleeton laughed and walked away. According to Williams, the only witness was a female truck driver named Becky who worked for another company.
Williams did not report these incidents to anyone at that time, feeling that he had had a chance to tell Beckum and Cleeton how he felt about their behavior, that they had listened to him, and that hopefully it was resolved. He had received a copy of Waste Management's employee handbook and knew it contained a policy prohibiting harassment. He knew that if he had a problem with harassment he could go to any supervisor to complain. Williams continued to take his breaks in the shop with the mechanics, rather than in the employee break room or in the transfer station where other employees took their breaks.
A couple of days later, Williams overheard Webster say "nigger" and "radio" as he was talking to Beckum. There was a truck separating Williams from Webster and Beckum, and they couldn't see him. Williams believes that Webster was accusing him of changing the station on the radio they all listened to during break. However, he didn't let Webster or Beckum know he overheard them and didn't complain about the racial slur to anyone at the time.
The next incident occurred about a month later, in July, around the time he contracted the poison ivy rash. The old weed eater Williams used quit working. The next morning he found a wooden sickle with an extension cord taped to it on his workbench. According to Williams, the extension cord had been fashioned into a hangman's noose. Cleeton and Beckum laughingly asked him how he liked his new weed eater. Williams believed that Baccadutre, the mechanics' supervisor, saw the noose, but does not name any other witnesses and does not remember what else may have been said.1 Williams did not report the incident to management.
A few days after the noose incident, Beckum "goosed" Williams by poking him with a broom handle in the rear end when he bent over to do some work. Beckum laughed and said to Cleeton, "Look how Travis jumped when I goosed him with the broom." Cleeton laughed. Williams did not complain.
Sometime in July, after all of the above incidents occurred, but close in time to the noose and broom incident, Whittinghill approached Williams and asked if any of the guys in the machine shop were hassling him in terms of racial comments or slurs. Williams states that he lied and said that everything was fine and that no one was messing with him.
On July 17, 2000, Whittinghill approached Williams again and said, Prompted by this second inquiry, Williams told Whittinghill about all of the incidents described above and that he believed Beckum and Cleeton were racist. Whittinghill laughed a little bit at the description of the broom incident, which made Williams believe he was treating his complaint as less than serious. Williams also felt Whittinghill smirked at the majority of the incidents, as if they were a joke. After listening to what he had to say, though, Whittinghill told Williams that Cleeton and Beckum were "different" and that he was going to talk to their boss, Baccadutre, about how they were behaving. He also said he was going to tell his boss about Williams's complaint.
The next day, Whittinghill told Williams to take his breaks in the transfer station — the other facility to which he was assigned and where some other employees took their breaks — rather than in the shop with Cleeton and Beckum and to generally try and avoid them. According to Williams, although Whittinghill didn't tell him that his complaint had been investigated, he could tell by their behavior that Cleeton and Beckum had been "chewed out" by somebody. They told him by the ice machine in the shop that it was a shame he was "making trouble" by complaining about their behavior and that they didn't want anything to do with him. Williams did not report the comment, which he...
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