Opinion ID: 764161
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Date of Accrual of Title VII Damages

Text: 43 Defendants contend that even if we affirm the district court's findings regarding liability, we should determine that the district court erred in determining the date upon which Title VII damages began to accrue against LIUNA. We review a district court's designation of the beginning of a back pay period for an abuse of discretion. See Warren, 138 F.3d at 1094. 44 Section 706(g) of Title VII, as amended in 1972, provides that [b]ack pay liability shall not accrue from a date more than two years prior to the filing of a charge with the [Equal Employment Opportunity] Commission. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(g). Plaintiffs did not file an EEOC charge against LIUNA until September 7, 1989, and thus defendants argue that their Title VII liability did not accrue until September 7, 1987. However, the first plaintiff to file an EEOC charge against Local 496 did so on February 1, 1984. The district court, citing Romain v. Kurek, 836 F.2d 241 (6th Cir.1987), determined that back pay liability against LIUNA commenced more than two years before this earlier date, on February 1, 1982. 9 45 Romain outlines the conditions under which an unnamed party may be sued pursuant to the EEOC right-to-sue letter that results from an EEOC charge. [A] party must be named in the EEOC charge before that party may be sued under Title VII unless there is a clear identity of interest between the unnamed party and a party named in the EEOC charge. Id. at 245 (internal quotes omitted). In Romain, this court adopted two tests for determining whether a party shares an identity of interest with another party. Under the first, set forth by the Seventh Circuit in Eggleston v. Chicago Journeymen Plumbers' Local Union No. 130, 657 F.2d 890 (7th Cir.1981), an identity of interest exists when the unnamed party possesses sufficient notice of the claim to participate in voluntary conciliation proceedings. Romain, 836 F.2d at 245 (Courts generally find an identity of interest where the unnamed party has been provided adequate notice of the charge under circumstances which afford him an opportunity to participate in conciliation proceedings aimed at voluntary compliance.). The second, developed by the Third Circuit in Glus v. G.C. Murphy Co., 562 F.2d 880 (3rd Cir.1977), uses four factors to determine the relationship between the named and the unnamed parties at the time the charge was filed: 46 (1) [W]hether the role of the unnamed party could through reasonable effort by the complainant be ascertained at the time of the filing of the EEOC complaint; 47 (2) [W]hether, under the circumstances, the interests of a named are so similar as the unnamed party's that for the purpose of obtaining voluntary conciliation and compliance it would be unnecessary to include the unnamed party in the EEOC proceedings; 48 (3) [W]hether its absence from the EEOC proceedings resulted in actual prejudice to the interests of the unnamed party; 49 (4) [W]hether the unnamed party has in some way represented to the complainant that its relationship with the complainant is to be through the named party. 50 Romain, 836 F.2d at 246. As might be expected, because we have found LIUNA vicariously liable for Local 496's discriminatory practices and directly liable for violating its duty to stop those practices, under either test LIUNA and Local 496 share an identity of interest. 51 With regard to the Eggleston test, LIUNA certainly had ample notice of the charges the plaintiffs filed against Local 496. Floyd Conrad notified regional LIUNA officials who then informed national LIUNA personnel of all charges and relevant EEOC findings in this case. In addition, the EEOC and NLRB directly provided LIUNA with copies of all charges alleging discrimination by Local 496. LIUNA enjoyed supervisory power to interfere in the affairs of Local 496 and chose not to exercise that power despite the ongoing charges of discrimination. In light of this fact, the district court's finding that LIUNA had been provided with adequate notice affording it an opportunity to participate in, or at least encourage the other defendants to participate in, conciliation proceedings is not an abuse of discretion. 52 With regard to the Glus multi-factor test, we add the following. First, the plaintiffs were unaware of LIUNA's involvement in the affairs of Local 496 until well after the filing of the original EEOC charge; moreover, one could hardly expect those excluded from union membership to understand the relationship between international and local unions at the time they filed EEOC charges. Cf. Romain, 836 F.2d at 245 (The 'identity of interest' exception acknowledges the reality that laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process of filing a charge with the EEOC, and accordingly prevents frustration of the remedial goals of Title VII by not requiring procedural exactness in stating the charge.). Second, the interests of LIUNA and the local were identical in terms of achieving voluntary conciliation with the plaintiffs during EEOC proceedings. Third, LIUNA was aware of the EEOC proceedings and thus was not prejudiced by the plaintiffs' failure to name it in the original EEOC charge. 10 53 Therefore, under the Glus test, as under the Eggleston test, we conclude that LIUNA and Local 496 shared an identity of interest. 54 Because of this identity of interest, LIUNA could have been sued under the plaintiffs' first EEOC charge. Accordingly, then, the plaintiffs' second EEOC charge was not needed and we will not limit plaintiffs' Title VII damages by the date of this second, unnecessary charge. The Second Circuit reached a similar conclusion in Cornwell v. Robinson, 23 F.3d 694 (2nd Cir.1994). Cornwell, like the plaintiffs in this case, was the victim of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Her original EEOC charge and her original complaint, both filed in 1986, named her employer and a few others. Both failed, however, to name the individual employees who had been harassing her. In June 1986, she filed a second EEOC charge naming those employees for incidents that took place the year after she filed her original charges. She eventually received a right-to-sue letter against those employees, but did not actually file a Title VII claim against them until 1992. After concluding that the incidents in 1986 were part of the same pattern and practice of discrimination that Cornwell had endured for several years, and thus were naturally reasonably related to the discrimination that she had complained of in her original EEOC charge, the Second Circuit concluded that Cornwell's claim against the employees was not time barred, despite the fact that Title VII requires plaintiffs to sue within 90 days of the receipt of a right-to-sue letter. The court concluded:we can see no basis in Title VII or in reason for concluding that the agency's response to her unnecessary administrative claim imposed on her time constraints to which she would not have been subject had she not filed the unnecessary claim. A contrary, technical reading of a remedial statute such as Title VII would be particularly inappropriate in a statutory scheme in which laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process. 55 Id. at 706. We agree. Thus, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by determining that the parent union's liability began to accrue at the same time as the local union's liability on February 1, 1982, and we affirm the judgment of the district court with regard to this issue.