Opinion ID: 403759
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Liability Under the Equal Pay Act

Text: 38 An employer violates the Equal Pay Act by paying unequal wages for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions. 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1) (1976). Determination that an Equal Pay Act violation has occurred involves both a legal and a factual problem. The legal issue is the standard of equality to be applied under the Act. The factual issue is whether the jobs in question met the standard, and the burden of proof is on plaintiffs to show that they did. Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, 417 U.S. 188, 94 S.Ct. 2223, 41 L.Ed.2d 1 (1974); Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 567 F.2d 429, 448 (D.C.Cir.1976). Once plaintiffs meet their burden, the burden then shifts to defendants to show that the pay differential was justified under one of the exceptions to the Act, Corning Glass, 417 U.S. at 205, 94 S.Ct. at 2233; Laffey, 567 F.2d at 448. With respect to plaintiffs' burden, GPO alleges both that the trial judge employed the wrong legal standard and that his finding that plaintiffs had met their burden for operators of the Smyth sewing machine was clearly erroneous. GPO also claims to have rebutted plaintiffs' case by showing that traditional industry classifications and training requirements justified the differential. The plaintiffs contend that they met their burden not only as to the Grade 4 bindery workers, but with respect to other bindery workers whose Equal Pay case was unsuccessful in the district court: The oversewer and Singer machine operators, handworkers, and passport inspectors. 39 1. The Legal Standard. Like most legislation, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was a compromise. Congress for several years had considered competing versions of what ultimately became the Act. Some versions sought to prohibit unequal pay for comparable work; this approach had been used during World War II by the National War Labor Board. S.Rep.No.176, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 3 (1963) (hereinafter, Senate Report ). Other versions sought only to prohibit unequal pay for equal work. Equality prevailed, in the main to avoid imposing job comparisons on employers. See, e.g., 108 Cong. Rec. 9196 (1963) (Remarks of Rep. Frelinghuysen); id. at 9209 (Remarks of Rep. Goodell). 40 Although passing the more limited statute, Congress recognized the disputatious nature of the term equality. Sponsors of more extensive versions of the bill were careful to emphasize that equality did not mean identity: it is not the intent of the Senate that jobs must be identical. Such a conclusion would obviously be ridiculous. Id. at 9761 (Remarks of Sen. McNamara). Sponsors in the House, although anxious to emphasize the limited nature of the bill, also used language short of absolute identity: 41 I think it is important that we have clear legislative history at this point. Last year when the House changed the word 'comparable' to 'equal' the clear intention was to narrow the whole concept ... the jobs involved should be virtually identical, ... very much alike or closely related to each other. 42 Id. at 9197 (Remarks of Rep. Goodell). The legislative history thus contains ammunition both for those who would insist on a very narrow reading of equality, and for those who would urge a more expansive understanding of the term. 9 43 Congress did not, however, leave interpretation of the diffuse term equal completely unchannelled. It wrote four aspects of equal work into the statute itself: equal skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. These factors are commonly used in job evaluation as practiced by industrial engineers, and Congress clearly intended the statute to be interpreted in light of this body of expertise. 10 44 In applying the term equal work, courts have been led by the legislative history toward a substantially equal test, a middle course between a requirement that the jobs in question be exactly alike and a requirement that they be merely comparable. 11 This middle path was adopted by implication by the Supreme Court in its only full-scale treatment of the Equal Pay Act, Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, 417 U.S. 188, 94 S.Ct. 2223, 41 L.Ed.2d 1 (1974). In addition to normal shift differentials, Corning paid a higher base wage to male inspectors on the night shift than to female inspectors on the day shift. The differential was a relic of the days when it was necessary to recruit men to work at night because women were prohibited from doing so by state statutes. In finding a violation of the Equal Pay Act, the Court interpreted the statutory factor of working conditions in light of its meaning in job evaluation plans, which generally confine the meaning of working conditions to job surroundings and hazards, id. at 202, 94 S.Ct. at 2231. Because night work and day work are different in one respect-the time of performance-Corning Glass implicitly rejected an Equal Pay Act standard of virtual identity, although the case did not explicitly formulate an Equal Pay Act test. 45 Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 567 F.2d 429 (D.C.Cir.1976), the leading Equal Pay Act case in this circuit, adopted the substantially equal test in reliance on Corning Glass. Our discussion of the test read in full: 46 For (it) is now well settled that jobs need not be identical in every respect before the Equal Pay Act is applicable; (citing Corning Glass ) the phrase equal work does not mean that the jobs must be identical, but merely that they must be substantially equal. A wage differential is justified only if it compensates for an appreciable variation in skill, effort or responsibility between otherwise comparable job work activities. 47 567 F.2d at 449 (citations omitted). The substantially equal test has now been adopted by every other circuit to pass on the question. 12 Judge Richey employed this test in the case at bar, J.A. 195, and we reaffirm our approval of it. 48 This case, however, presents a difficult and largely unexplored problem in the interpretation of the Equal Pay Act: whether work may be substantially equal, in spite of the fact that it is performed on different machines. 13 Bindery worker Grade 4s work on the Smyth sewing machine; bookbinders do not. GPO contends that this fact is sufficient as a matter of law to preclude the finding of an Equal Pay violation. Judge Richey concluded that it was not, and that work on the Smyth was sufficiently like the work performed by bookbinders on other machines as to allow relief under the Act. J.A. 195. 49 In determining that work on different machines could be substantially equal, Judge Richey was guided by Department of Labor regulations: 50 (T)he performance of jobs on different machines or equipment would not necessarily result in a determination that the work so performed is unequal within the meaning of the statute if the equal pay provisions otherwise apply. 51 29 C.F.R. § 800.123 (1980). This court has paid substantial deference to Department of Labor regulations in interpreting the Act, see Laffey, 567 F.2d at 449, 14 and we continue to do so. 52 Congress never specifically considered whether work performed on different machines might be equal for purposes of the Equal Pay Act. 15 To refuse to find work equal merely because it is performed on different machines, however, would be to insist on the requirement of exact identity declared obviously ridiculous by Senator McNamara and rejected by all of the courts treating the subject. See supra at 271, 272 n.12. The result would be largely to foreclose application of the Act whenever machines are involved-an evisceration of the Act clearly at odds with Congress' broad remedial goals. See Senate Report at 1; House Report at 2. For example, different typewriters, power saws or automobiles are different machines. 53 Moreover, the very fact that Congress chose to channel the term equality by the language of job evaluation programs presupposes a recognition that jobs can be substantially equal even though performed with different equipment or machines. Job evaluation plans focus on experience, skill, surroundings, and responsibility and clearly contemplate assigning common classifications to work on related, albeit different machines. 16 Along these lines, in the congressional debates Representative Goodell presented guidelines for the interpretation of job content that emphasized that jobs be normally related and fall within closely related job classifications-both descriptions that apply easily to different components of a single productive process. Of course, work on different machines can differ radically; Representative Goodell used the example that driving a truck would not be equal to piloting a tug boat. 109 Cong.Rec. 9209 (1963). The question in every Equal Pay Act case is simply whether the jobs in question are sufficiently related and sufficiently similar in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions, as to be substantially equal. 54 2. The Facts of This Case and the Standard of Review. The trial judge's findings of fact in an equal pay case are like any other finding of fact; they may be overturned on appeal only if clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a); see, e.g., United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 541, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948); Laffey, 567 F.2d at 453; Kinsey v. First Regional Securities, Inc., 557 F.2d 830, 835-36 (D.C.Cir.1977); Causey v. Ford Motor Co., 516 F.2d 416, 420 (5th Cir. 1975). Judge Richey did not err in finding that GPO violated the Equal Pay Act with respect to bindery workers operating the Smyth sewing machine but not with respect to other bindery worker machine operators, handworkers, and passport inspectors. 55 a. Bindery Work Operators of the Smyth Sewing Machine. The Smyth sewing machine is a multi-needle machine for sewing groups of pages (signatures) together into what we would recognize as the inside of a book. The operator of the Smyth chooses the number of needles required for a particular job and sets thread and bobbin tension for each needle. She also sets the needles to position stitching properly along the spine of the book and sets guides to position signatures as they are sewn together. She is responsible for routine maintenance tasks such as changing needles and oiling and cleaning the machines. In operating the machine, she opens signatures and places them on a pusher. Because the operator does not control the pace of the pusher, considerable dexterity is required to feed at the proper rate. The Smyth also runs paste along the spine of the book to ensure additional strength; the Smyth operator must coordinate a cutter at the proper moment when the inside of a particular book is sewn together. Tr. Mar. 8, 1979, at 55-65. 56 In finding that plaintiffs had met their Equal Pay Act burden to prove substantial equality between the jobs of the Smyth operators and bookbinders, Judge Richey relied heavily upon the testimony of plaintiffs' expert witness, James O'Connell, that operation of the Smyth is substantially equal to operation of many bookbinder machines. J.A. 186. He viewed O'Connell's testimony as buttressed by the testimony of plaintiffs' other expert, Bertram Gottlieb, and the testimony of journeymen bindery workers, bookbinders, and GPO officials. J.A. 166-72, 176-79, 186-87. Judge Richey discounted the testimony of defendant's expert Irwin Lazarus, upon finding flaws both in his methodology and its execution. J.A. 173-76. While GPO sought to question Mr. O'Connell's qualifications as an expert, Tr. Mar. 15, 1979, at 263-305, Mr. O'Connell was the personnel management specialist chosen by the Civil Service Commission to review GPO job classifications after plaintiffs filed their administrative complaint. GPO is hard pressed to attack the credentials of the expert assigned by the government to this case. In any event, it is not for us to second-guess reasonable judgments by the trial judge with regard to the weight to be accorded expert testimony. 57 Because he had been assigned to investigate the administrative complaint of Smyth operators, Mr. O'Connell compared the job of operating the Smyth to a wide range of bookbinder jobs. He initially determined that the Smyth's creation of a book's inside, and bookbinder tasks such as folding and cutting signatures, making a book cover (case) and casing the inside into the cover, were an integral part of the same productive process. Id. at 21. He noted their physical and organizational proximity and that they involved similar functions: gluing, stitching, cutting, and putting together the parts of a book. Within the process, Mr. O'Connell observed the Smyth and twenty-five bookbinder machine operations, to determine whether they involved similar difficulty, responsibility, and qualifications. Id. at 9, 70. He characterized the Smyth operation as more like many bookbinder jobs than the latter were like each other. The Smyth, he concluded, was in the middle range of difficulty, responsibility and qualification requirements of bookbinder machine operations. Id. at 20. 58 Cross-examination did elicit the admission that Mr. O'Connell had given similar effort ratings to the Smyth and a cloth cutter that required loading 100-lb. bolts in order to position them for cutting. Id. at 109. There is dispute about the extent to which different kinds and amounts of effort may be compared for purposes of a finding of equality under the Equal Pay Act. 17 The Department of Labor regulations define effort to include both mental and physical exertion, and allow effort of different kinds to be balanced in application of the Act, 29 C.F.R. § 800.127 (1980). To illustrate, the regulations suggest that the effort of a male checker who sometimes carries heavy packages may be equated with the effort of a female checker who sometimes performs fill-in work requiring greater dexterity, whereas a regular additional task of lifting from an assembly line could justify a wage differential. Id. § 800.218. GPO, disputing this approach, contends that jobs are substantially equal only if they involve effort of the same kind. 18 59 We need not reach this troublesome issue of how effort is to be defined. Cross-examination did not raise similar questions about the other bookbinders' machines to which plaintiffs' experts favorably compared the Smyth. To prove a violation under the Equal Pay Act, plaintiffs need only show their jobs were equal to the jobs of some bookbinders, but treated unequally. Plaintiffs need not show that their jobs were substantially similar to all, or even most bookbinder jobs. Id. § 800.238; Laffey, 567 F.2d at 450; Shultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., 421 F.2d 259, 264 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 905, 90 S.Ct. 1696, 26 L.Ed.2d 64 (1970); Elisburg, Equal Pay in the United States: the Development and Implementation of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, 29 Lab. L.J. 195 (1978). For purposes of an Equal Pay Act violation, it is irrelevant that GPO classifies the bookbinder jobs that resemble plaintiffs' together with other jobs that do not. The testimony of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses supports a finding that the Smyth operators' jobs were substantially equal to the jobs of some bookbinders. Operators of the Smyth sewing machine, therefore, carried their burden of establishing a prima facie case of an Equal Pay Act violation by GPO. 60 GPO makes two other objections to the plaintiffs' prima facie showing. First, GPO contends that bookbinders have supervisory authority over bindery workers with whom they work and thus more responsibility than Smyth operators. The trial judge's finding that bookbinders do not have supervisory authority, however, J.A. 188-89, is securely based in the trial record. For example, a Bindery superintendent, Kenneth Kingsbury, testified that bookbinders neither disciplined the bindery workers with whom they worked, nor were held accountable for their mistakes. Tr. Mar. 13, 1979, at 13-14. Moreover, quite a number of the bookbinders' machines to which the Smyth was compared favorably were operated by a single bookbinder, and thus presented no opportunity for direction of the work of others. 61 Second, GPO alleges that the plaintiffs' experts mistakenly compared single operations rather than entire jobs. Judge Richey, however, found explicitly that rotation among operations was not required of bookbinders. J.A. 176. His finding is amply supported by the trial testimony. Mr. Kingsbury testified that bookbinders normally had a regular assignment and that operators of major machines rarely changed assignments. Id. at 15-25. Assignments were cemented by seniority, and it was not unusual for bookbinders to spend entire careers in the same section of the Bindery. Id. at 16, 32. Mr. Kingsbury admitted that GPO had not formally studied the need for back-up rotation and had kept no formal statistics on bookbinder assignments. Id. at 17, 59. Ammi Potter, Mr. Kingsbury's successor as Bindery Supervisor, also testified that GPO had not evaluated whether it could operate with bookbinders who operated only one machine, Tr. Mar. 14, 1979, at 25-27. While it appears that as GPO's work force contracts, rotation may become more important, id. at 29-30, the record does not show that Judge Richey erred in concluding that rotation was not a necessary part of all bookbinders' jobs during the time the alleged violations of the Equal Pay Act took place. 62 We conclude that the plaintiffs succeeded in proving a prima facie case of an Equal Pay Act violation with respect to the Smyth operators. Once the plaintiffs have made out such a prima facie case, the burden shifts to the defendants to show that their payment of unequal wages was justified under one of the exceptions enumerated in the statute: (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earning by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex. 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1) (1976); Corning Glass, 417 U.S. 188, 94 S.Ct. 2223, 41 L.Ed.2d 1. Judge Richey found that GPO's only defense is that the bookbinder's job involves a four year apprenticeship requirement in the form of a training program that has traditionally excluded women and that the burden had not been met. J.A. 187. In this appeal, GPO contends that traditional industry patterns of classification and training are a differential based on a factor other than sex, and hence a defense to the Equal Pay Act charge. 63 Traditional industry practice was certainly the kind of difference contemplated as a factor other than sex under the Equal Pay Act. As Representative Goodell remarked, Differences in pay that are based upon historical and widely accepted differences in job content will not be challenged, if not based on sex. 109 Cong.Rec. 9209 (1963) (emphasis added). Traditional industry practice may reveal continuing fealty to sexual discrimination, however, and if so does not shield employers against the charge of an Equal Pay Act violation. E.g., Corning Glass, 417 U.S. at 205, 94 S.Ct. at 2233; Laffey, 567 F.2d at 451. For example, the traditions of paying women less than men, or of assigning different labelling to female and male jobs, no matter how hoary, are not defenses to the Equal Pay Act. To hold otherwise would protect the most egregious forms of discrimination, merely because, like Faulkner's Dilsey, they have endured. 64 The differences in machine assignments and training opportunities found at GPO were certainly longstanding in the binding industry. The record amply reveals, however, that these differences constituted a continuing structure of sexual discrimination. See supra pp. 265-266. The history of the binding industry, therefore, does not provide GPO with a defense to the Equal Pay Act violation charged here. We affirm Judge Richey's conclusion that GPO failed to rebut the plaintiffs' prima facie case that GPO violated the Equal Pay Act with respect to the Smyth operators. 65 b. Operators of Other Machines. The multi-needle oversewer machine cross-stitches the spine of a book, producing the stiff back characteristic of rebound volumes. The oversewer is less difficult to set up and considerably less difficult to operate than the Smyth. The oversewer operator does not open signatures, cut, or paste, and she controls the pace of the machine. The Singer is a heavy-duty version of the home favorite and performs straight, single-needle stitching. At GPO, it was used to sew the backs of passports, but has been replaced by automation and is now used only for occasional repairs. 66 The plaintiffs' expert O'Connell did not make a study of the oversewer or the Singer. The plaintiffs' case as to these machines depended solely on the testimony presented by their expert Gottlieb. Judge Richey found Mr. Gottlieb's testimony insufficient to support a threshold determination that the two jobs subsequently equated are substantially the same. J.A. 196. The record supports his conclusion, see, e.g., Tr. Mar. 8, 1979, at 72-73. 67 c. Handworkers. Handwork tasks performed by bindery workers include loading machines, inspecting products, gluing maps into books, and handsewing book spines. Bookbinders, too, are assigned a variety of handwork. One of the simplest of these tasks is making tablets by smearing glue along the edge of a stack of paper. The most difficult bookbinder hand tasks are performed in the library section, where books such as gold-embossed special editions are made. Both sides agree that the library handicraft cannot be compared to any bindery worker tasks; only Judge Richey's refusal to compare bindery workers' hand tasks with the simpler bookbinder operations is at issue here. 68 Judge Richey's findings of fact relied on the statement by the plaintiff's expert O'Connell that bindery worker hand tasks and even the simple bookbinder tasks were too disparate to be compared in absolute terms. J.A. 172. Although the plaintiffs' expert Gottlieb did compare the hand tasks, as Judge Richey also noted, we cannot second-guess the weight assigned expert testimony by the trial judge. We therefore affirm Judge Richey's holding that the handworkers should not recover under the Equal Pay Act. 69 d. Passport Inspectors. Replacing a male in the same job with a lower-paid female, or vice versa, is one of the most glaring violations of the Equal Pay Act. 29 C.F.R. § 800.114(c) (1980). E.g., DiSalvo v. Chamber of Commerce, 568 F.2d 593 (8th Cir. 1978); Hodgson v. American Bank of Commerce, 447 F.2d 416 (5th Cir. 1971). The female, however, must replace the male in the same job. The Equal Pay Act compares jobs, not tasks; an employer does not violate the Act by merely shifting a task to the employee receiving the lower salary, 29 C.F.R. § 800.119 (1980). 70 Before September 1978, the job of inspecting passports was performed by two bookbinders, one assigned to each passport team. In September 1978, GPO began training bindery workers to inspect passports; six were trained, and they performed the task on rotation. J.A. 172. Plaintiffs challenge Judge Richey's refusal to find that the reassignment violated the Equal Pay Act. Brief for Plaintiffs at 111-12. 71 The plaintiffs in this case made a clear showing that the task of passport inspection had been reassigned to bindery workers, with an increase in production quotas besides. They failed, however, to show that the female passport inspectors had stepped into formerly male jobs. Bookbinders inspected passports on a nearly full-time basis. When not needed in the passport cage, they rotated to some of the simpler bookbinder operations such as making pads or operating the round corner machine. Tr. Mar. 14, 1979, at 39. Bindery workers, however, were assigned to inspect passports approximately every two weeks, and in the interim joined a labor pool of bindery workers available for assignment to any bindery worker operation at GPO. Id. at 54, 64. The plaintiffs made no showing of what portion of their time bindery workers devoted to inspecting passports; for all we are told, it could have been as little as one-third. Without a showing that they had been assigned passport inspection nearly full time, as had the bookbinders, the plaintiffs did not create a record that mandates the conclusion that they had taken over a bookbinder job. We thus cannot find clear error in Judge Richey's failure to find that the reassignment violated the Equal Pay Act.