Opinion ID: 374662
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Subjectivity and Racial Incidents.

Text: 53 Western Electric parcels out its projects to various orbit supervisors. Suborbit and line supervisors then devise a work operations or job plan for the project, indicating the complexity of each job and approximate number of hours needed to complete each phase. The orbit supervisor then selects the employees for the project and assigns them to work under suborbit and line supervisors. Specific assignments of tasks are made by the line supervisors, who are given a contract by Western Electric that indicates the number of hours the project should take and are graded on how well they stay within the budgeted number; if they bring a job in under budget, 23 they receive a high rating. These ratings are important to their advancement within management. Line supervisors have a great degree of control over an installer's rate of advancement, partly through their control of specific work assignments of installers; if an installer is not assigned work in codes within the next higher index, no advancement to that index is possible. Also, the line supervisors' evaluations of an installer's work are crucial factors in the index review decision to rate an installer qualified in a particular code. 54 Western Electric's witnesses admitted that (1) supervisors have no written instructions to guide them in their granting ratings of 9; (2) the company has no way to tell whether every supervisor uses standardized criteria in making his evaluations of installers' qualifications; (3) if an installer is not given a 9 in the index review, no reasons for the decision are contemporaneously recorded in written form; (4) line supervisors keep no permanent written records of the quality and efficiency of each installer's work; and (5) supervisors' assignments of installers to particular tasks are based on a variety of factors, one of which is the installers' perceived skills. 55 Most plaintiffs 24 testified that certain white installers hired after them or at the same time advanced to higher indexes than they had achieved. Additionally, the plaintiffs testified that they had not been assigned work in higher codes even though they had requested such assignments from their supervisors. Their testimony also detailed instances of supervisors' addressing them as boys and other racially motivated language and conduct by coworkers in the 1960's; 25 some of those coworkers are now supervisors. While some or most of this evidence may concern time-barred conduct, it is relevant, United Air Lines v. Evans, 431 U.S. 553, 97 S.Ct. 1885, 52 L.Ed.2d 571 (1977), and may be used, in conjunction with statistics, to illuminate current practices which, viewed in isolation, may not indicate discriminatory motives. Cf. Local Lodge No. 1424 v. N. L. R. B., 362 U.S. 411, 80 S.Ct. 822, 826, 4 L.Ed.2d 832 (1960) (Bryan Manufacturing) (Events occurring before the six-month limitation period under section 10 of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 160, may be utilized to shed light on the true character of matters occurring within the limitations period.). Finally, plaintiffs brought out several incidents 26 that tended to prove that Western Electric gave its supervisors substantial discretionary power over installers' advancement rates. 56 Basically, then, plaintiffs sought to prove discrimination both in work assignments and in the index review process. They alleged that they were not given work assignments that would allow them to advance as rapidly as whites to higher indexes and that the subjective nature of both the process by which work assignments are made and the process by which installers are rated qualified operated to impede black installers' advancement within the index system. 57