Opinion ID: 322495
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Seniority Carryover

Text: 75 Members of the plaintiff class who transfer to the road must be permitted to take with them seniority for job bidding and lay off purposes. The question is 'how much?' In general terms, the answer is that 'how much seniority the transferee deserves should be determined by the date he would have transferred but for his employer's discrimination'. Bing v. Roadway Express, Inc., 485 F.2d at 450. There is no way to arrive at such a date with exactitude, however, and some method for approximation is necessary. 76 In Bing we approved a 'qualification date' formulation-- the date a transferee had the experience necessary to qualify him for a road driving job. 485 F.2d at 451. 29 The Bing test represents a compromise between the trial court's determination in that case that seniority rights should date from when the transferees applied to become road drivers, and the remedy requested by the Government as amicus, that transferees should carry over full company seniority. This Court felt, on the one hand, that the application-date formulation of the district court failed 'to account for the realities of entrenched employment discrimination', 485 F.2d at 451; the company defendant's discriminatory practices discouraged city drivers from applying. On the other hand, the Government's theory of full seniority carryover would have given superseniority to those transferees who were not qualified to be road drivers before they began working for the defendant. Until they were qualified, 'discrimination could not have blocked their employment as road drivers'. Id. 77 The Bing qualification-date formulation was rejected recently by a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit. In Thornton v. East Texas Motor Freight, 6 Cir. 1974, 497 F.2d 416, a case involving the same trucking company that is a defendant in the instant case, the Court affirmed the district court's grant of seniority carryover dating from six months after the transferee requested transfer or filed a charge with the EEOC. Although the Court distinguished Bing on the grounds that more charges were filed with the EEOC in Thornton (thus apparently showing that 'silence and futility of protest' were less the norm), the Court also criticized the Bing rationale: 'The rationale in Bing was that silence might be caused by a belief in the futility of transfer request. That may be true, but also it may be caused by no desire to transfer.' 497 F.2d at 421. The Court also noted that 'there is something to be said for rewarding those drivers who protest and help to bring rights to a group of employees who have been victims of discrimination'. 497 F.2d 420. 78 We are unpersuaded by these considerations. First, we think that the best indication whether a person desired transfer to the road in the past is reflected in whether he desires transfer now, so long as we do not create special incentives or disincentives that skew the balance. The qualification-date test of Bing, by taking into account experience requirements on the one hand and the effects of entrenched discrimination on the other, is as neutral as any we can envision. Second, the concern showed by the Thornton majority for rewarding those who help to bring rights to a group of employees was adequately answered by Judge Phillips, dissenting in part: 'Any such 'reward' should not be at the expense of the other victims of the discrimination. Title VII was enacted to protect all employees from unlawful discrimination. This is especially true where the discrimination intimidated the employees to such an extent that they felt it would be futile to request a transfer.' 497 F.2d at 428. In short, we reaffirm the qualification-date formulation of Bing. 30