Opinion ID: 475765
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Background of the Claim of the Plaintiff Class

Text: 4 The City of Houston Civic Center consists of several large facilities, music halls, convention center and coliseum, together with parking garages. Approximately 300 people are employed by this department of the city government. One of the divisions in this department is the parking division, and most of the employees there are termed parking attendants. Most of those parking attendants are classified as part time employees and though they are paid a good hourly wage, they are only paid for the hours they work and do not obtain civil service status. That status would carry with it vacation and sick time, eventual pension benefits, as well as job security. 5 When the parking division began operating in 1967, and for several years thereafter, most of the attendants were white. The plaintiff Alvin Moore was manager of the parking division from 1972 to 1976, and over those years while he was in charge of hiring, the racial mix changed until black workers dominated. Moore and his black assistants also did the scheduling and assignment of hours, and during the years 1975 to 1981 it became common for parking attendants classified as part time employees to work 40 or more hours a week. The assignment of full time and overtime hours to part time attendants was stopped by a new department director in May of 1981. However, during the 1970's the parking attendants became aware of the benefits of civil service status accorded generally to full time employees and sought to obtain it for themselves, eventually filing suits that were consolidated into the one at hand. 6 The record demonstrates an open policy of hiring and promotion throughout the departments of the City of Houston. In 1977 when this suit was filed, and throughout the following four years, a much larger percentage of blacks was hired in nearly every level and category of city employment than the proportion of blacks in the general population. From 1975 through 1981 the percentage of blacks in part time employment, as well as the percentage in full time employment, was substantially greater than the percentage of blacks in the population. In the civic center department itself, full time positions filled by either hiring or promotion from December 2, 1976 to June of 1980 numbered 33 blacks and 23 whites. From June 1980 to the date of the trial, positions were filled by 54 blacks and 37 whites. While there is some discussion by plaintiffs about the classification of the employees, there is no suggestion at all in the evidence that blacks were channeled into menial positions while whites were directed into better jobs. 7 The trial court found that, over the period 1975 to 1981, the parking attendants who actually worked full time included 98 (66%) who were black, 36 (23%) who were hispanic and 14 (11%) who were white. The parties stipulated that in 1978, the year after Clayborn Nash began this suit, there were 238 employees in the civic center, of whom 70 (30.6%) were white and 135 (56.7%) were black. There were then 45 part time employees in the department, and 38 of these were black. 8 In 1981 the class was certified to include all Black past and present Black employees of the City of Houston who work or worked on a full time basis but are classified as part time employees because of their race who claim they were denied civil service status.... The class was redefined and finally amended to specify those parking attendants who worked 50 weeks consecutively and averaged at least 40 hours per week at any time during the relevant time period. 9 The trial court found that there was no proof of discrimination in hiring, either in the civic center department, or city wide. Though the court felt that there was a problem for a part time employee who wished to move into a civil service job, it acknowledged that four part time black employees of the parking division secured civil service jobs in the department following 1974, whereas no white part time parking attendant did so. The district court observed that no evidence was presented to show that the practices of the City with respect to the parking attendants prevented the plaintiff class from securing jobs which similarly situated whites obtained. What the court found objectionable was that parking attendants might work more than 40 hours a week without obtaining civil service status, whereas no employees working comparable hours in the convention or auditorium divisions were without that status. 10 The court regarded that disparity as a condition of employment that fell more harshly on blacks than whites because there were more black parking attendants. It concluded, therefore, that the plaintiff class had presented a prima facie adverse impact case. Then the court rejected the business necessity explanation of the defendant City, an explanation that the City desired a ready pool of parking attendants for a widely fluctuating demand. The court found that there was enough work to occupy a number of the attendants full time and that the City did not need to keep them at part time. The same statistic, the larger number of blacks in the disfavored position, was held by the court to establish a prime facie disparate treatment case. Again, the explanation for the policy was rejected as pretextual. And the City was therefore held to be liable to the class. The 37 class members who were identified were awarded additional backpay totalling $269,827.08 plus pension rights.