Opinion ID: 501743
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Early Years

Text: 24 The EEOC argues that the district court erred as a matter of law by failing to address separately what the EEOC terms the earlier years at issue in its hiring and promotion into commission sales claims. In support of this argument, the EEOC cites various cases it says stand for the proposition that [t]he law clearly requires that a defendant's employment practices prior to its taking corrective action be examined separately. We do not read the cases as supporting that particular proposition. Instead, we believe the cases hold, at most, that an employer's corrective action does not absolve the employer from liability based on discriminatory practices occurring before the employer took the corrective action. See Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 341-42, 97 S.Ct. at 1857-58; Rich v. Martin Marietta Corp., 522 F.2d 333, 346 (10th Cir.1975); Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F.2d 421, 425-26 (8th Cir.1970); Patterson v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 440 F.Supp. 409, 412-13 (N.D.Ind.1977) (defendant employer not permitted to combine statistics for precharge and post-charge periods, because [a]ctions taken subsequent to the filing of E.E.O.C. charges cannot moot issues of discrimination occurring prior to that time), aff'd, 659 F.2d 736 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1100, 102 S.Ct. 674, 70 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981); cf. Capaci v. Katz & Besthoff, Inc., 711 F.2d 647, 655-57 (5th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 927, 104 S.Ct. 1709, 80 L.Ed.2d 182 (1984). These cases are all characterized by an assumption that employer practices in existence before some form of corrective action (usually occurring after Title VII charges were filed against the employer) were in fact discriminatory. 25 The district court in this case, however, never found that Sears engaged in discriminatory hiring and promotion practices before the EEOC filed charges or before Sears began affirmative action efforts. The district court also never held that Sears' later policies and programs absolved Sears of any liability for earlier discriminatory practices. Instead, the district court found that the EEOC's statistics failed to prove liability for any period at issue in this case and that Sears' affirmative action efforts began as early as 1968, well before the EEOC's August 1973 charge. 26 The EEOC's challenge is thus not that the district court erred as a matter of law. Its argument is more properly characterized as a claim that the court incorrectly failed to make two factual findings, either finding of which should have led the district court to consider the early years separately from the later period. One of those findings the EEOC claims the district court erred in not making was that there were significant differences between the early years and the later years in the liability period of 1973 to 1980. The second finding would have been that Sears adopted the Mandatory Achievement of Goals (MAG) affirmative action plan in response to the EEOC's charge, or that Sears designed the MAG program as a corrective action to bless earlier discriminatory practices. On review of factual findings, we will uphold the district court's findings unless they are clearly erroneous. See Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985); Andre v. Bendix Corp., 774 F.2d 786, 788 (7th Cir.1985). We are not persuaded that the district court's failure to make either of the above findings was clear error. 27 The EEOC claims that during the early years there were fundamental changes in Sears' practices regarding the hiring and promotion of women into commission sales positions. The EEOC then cites statistics indicating that in various sales departments (e.g., auto accessories or furniture), percentages of commission saleswomen doubled, tripled, quadrupled, or increased up to eightfold during various early periods. Initially, we note that the district court found that all of the EEOC statistics were plagued by arbitrary and false assumptions. We discuss these statistical defects in more detail later. Because we find that the district court did not err in its criticisms of the EEOC's statistics, we cannot accept the EEOC's argument that those statistics indicated differences that the district court should have recognized by separating early years from later years. 28 Even if the district court had found the EEOC's underlying statistics sound, we are not convinced by the EEOC's arguments that the district court should have recognized differences between early years and some later period. First, we are unsure what the EEOC means by the term early years, because the EEOC never specifically defined that term. The district court designated the liability period as beginning March 3, 1973 and ending in 1980. At various points in its argument, the EEOC suggests that the early years is a period from 1972 (the year before the EEOC charge was filed) to 1975 (two years after the charge was filed), the period before August 30, 1973 (when the EEOC filed charges), a period from 1973 to 1975, or the period before the summer of 1974 (when Sears implemented the MAG program). 10 Because the EEOC ultimately wants to argue that it can show that Sears discriminated before the implementation of its affirmative action program by separating the figures before and after implementation of affirmative action, we believe the EEOC means the early years as the beginning of the liability period, which the district court found was March 30, 1973, to the implementation of the MAG program in the summer of 1974. 11 Assuming that this fifteento sixteen-month period constitutes the early years, we are not convinced by the EEOC's arguments and statistics that the district court erred by failing to recognize significant differences between this period and the years following it. 29 The EEOC did not emphasize this period in its complaint, nor did it present data corresponding to this fifteen- to sixteen-month period that it now claims should have been considered separately. Neither did it attempt to distinguish data for promotions and hires during this period from data for promotions and hires during the time beginning after the early years ended. Instead, the statistics it cites to us on appeal (which were also presented to the district court) as indicating dramatic changes in hiring and promotion encompass periods before and after the early years. The EEOC presented data on promotions and hires broken down by year, beginning with 1972. 12 Its figures for 1973 thus included two months of hires and promotions before the relevant liability period began, and its data for 1974 included five to six months of hires and promotions that occurred after the MAG plan was implemented. 30 The data compiled and presented to this court by the EEOC are misleading as well as imprecise. The EEOC, in citing statistics it says show dramatic increases during the early years, does not carefully recognize or refer to that time period. For example, it states that between 1972, the year before the EEOC charge was filed, and 1975, two years after the charge was filed, the female proportion of full-time commission sales hires more than tripled (from 9.9% to 31.1%) and in breaking down the figures by division, that in Sewing Machines, during this three-year period, the female proportion of full-time hires almost tripled (from 13.5% to 47.9%) and in Furniture, it more than quadrupled between 1972 and 1974 alone (8.1% to 33.8%) and had increased more than fivefold (to 43.0%) by 1976. These statistics obfuscate increases that took place during the early years, before the implementation of the MAG plan. Although the EEOC claimed that the female percentage of sales hires more than tripled between 1972 and 1975, the same percentage nearly doubled between 1972 and 1973. Analysis by division of products is similarly misleading--percentages of Sewing Machines hires that the EEOC says almost tripled between 1972 and 1975 more than doubled between 1972 and 1973 and percentages for the Furniture division that more than quadrupled between 1972 and 1974 tripled between 1972 and 1973. 13 31 Some of the statistics the EEOC cites are for a time period that approximates the early years, but fail to support its argument that there were differences before and after implementation of the MAG plan. The EEOC claimed that between 1973 and 1974 alone, which would be during the early years period, the female percentage of hires more than tripled in Hardware and increased almost twenty times in Plumbing and Heating (the latter figure almost trebling by the next year). Other EEOC compilations of statistics are misleading for different reasons. The EEOC claims that the female percentage of commission sales hires for part-time outside the Midwestern Territory more than doubled between 1972 and 1975. A close look at the data indicates that the percentage was increasing steadily from 1972 to 1974, including during 1973-1974, which is fairly close to the early years period at issue. While some of the data seems to support the differences claimed by the EEOC--for example, the female percentage in Auto Accessories increased more than eightfold between 1972 and 1974 and more than twelvefold between 1972 and 1975--the difference in percentage increases between 1972-1974 and 1974-1975 is not as great as the EEOC's compilation of data suggests. In short, the EEOC's attempts to show significant differences between pre-MAG and post-MAG percentages of female workers are insufficient to persuade us that the district court clearly erred in failing to recognize the alleged increases by considering the early years separately. 14 32 The second aspect of the EEOC's claim that the district court should have separately considered the early years is that the district court clearly erred in failing to find that Sears' implementation of the MAG plan was corrective action taken by Sears in response to the EEOC's charges to escape liability for its earlier discrimination. The district court found, however, that Sears' commitment to affirmative action began in 1968, Sears in 1969 set a long-term goal of 38% women at all jobs at Sears, and in April 1970, Sears instituted a centralized, company-wide affirmative action program for women and minorities, which was revised in 1972. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1293. The EEOC argues that nothing in the record supports the district court's findings that attracting women to commission sales at Sears has been an important priority in Sears' affirmative action program since the first affirmative action questionnaire was circulated in 1968 and that Sears had engaged in pre-MAG efforts to hire or promote women into commission sales. Yet the EEOC acknowledges that in 1972 Sears' affirmative action plan mentioned the movement of women into commission sales positions. The year 1972 is pre-MAG, because, as the court found, MAG was implemented in mid-1974. The EEOC also fails to refute the district court's finding that Sears set a long-term goal of 38% women at all jobs at Sears in 1969--presumably all jobs includes commission sales jobs. 33 The EEOC attempts to characterize the MAG plan as a response to its charge against Sears by quoting the remarks of Sears Chairman Arthur M. Wood at a meeting of top executives to discuss affirmative action. Wood stated: 34 The fact is that Sears has been identified as a target by the [Equal Employment Opportunity] Commission and we must improve our situation quickly in order to be in as defensible position as possible--to do this I want to urge our lawyers and others working on discrimination cases to conciliate every possible claim; in short, we should stay out of court and out of direct confrontation with enforcement agencies as long as possible, giving our program of voluntary action time to show meaningful progress for minorities and women. 35 This remark, however, is not proof that Sears implemented MAG in response to the EEOC's charge. The remark was made May 21, 1973, more than three months before the charge was filed. On its face the remark indicates nothing more than that Sears was aware of potential EEOC action, although the EEOC claims that Wood had been informed by Ray J. Graham, Sears' Director of Equal Opportunity from 1968 through 1980, of the likelihood of the EEOC's bringing a National Programs charge against Sears. Other evidence is consistent with the court's finding that Sears' affirmative action efforts began in 1968. Graham testified, I can't emphasize too strongly that it was not the threat of EEOC action that caused Sears to [adopt the MAG plan], and stated that at the time of the meeting he had no knowledge of any EEOC targeting of Sears. Graham further testified that the MAG program was designed to accelerate [Sears'] progress and continue Sears' leadership role in affirmative action, and that Sears had one [affirmative action] plan from the very outset [in 1968]. Furthermore, the EEOC never identified at trial the policies or practices of the MAG plan that allegedly changed the disparities generated by its statistical analyses. Apart from saying that MAG was materially different from earlier affirmative action programs, the EEOC does not state what the changed practices were. The EEOC has not persuaded us that the district court clearly erred in finding that Sears' affirmative action commitment began in 1968. We hold that the court did not err in not considering the early years separately.