Opinion ID: 688748
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of the Flex Plan

Text: 23 We start with two pillars that do not rest on the credibility of witnesses. The first is the fact that there is no evidence that any regional attorney at any period ever received a promotion through such a plan. The second is a document, dated March 14, 1991, of some nineteen pages constituting the SGA Flexible Salary Plan, which plaintiff characterizes as the actual Government Affairs flexible salary plan. Senior Vice President Partoll, head of SGA, verified that this document comprised the department's plan. 24 We sketch some of the highlights: Criteria prominently included Networking Capability, Scope of Assignment--Elements of Federal, State, and Local responsibilities both Regulatory and Legislative, and Complexity of Environment--responsible for Federal/State members, complexity of State Commission/State House, number of bills introduced; Objectives featured To compensate individuals who commit to long-term assignments--foregoing career enhancing or advancement alternatives--for the benefit of the corporation; Scope of Assignment listed thirteen items, beginning with state regulatory only, state legislative only, state regulatory and state legislative, state and federal legislative; A Proposed Clarification of SG 11 Assignments contained seven paragraphs, all directed to differentiating among the responsibilities of various kinds of state managers. 25 The last pages were devoted to listing the fifty states, the lobbyists assigned to each, and data referring to numbers of members of the congressional delegation, the length of sessions of the state legislature, etc. In short, this document is redolent of the life and work of lobbyists. 26 Plaintiff endeavors to extract support for her assertion that she was eligible for a salary increase under this plan, despite the fact that she was not a lobbyist. In her affidavit, she deftly matches criteria announced under the various headings to her own experience as a regional attorney. For example, under Individual Related Variables, she claims to have met the criteria of longevity, unique experience, skills in communications, negotiation, etc. Under Job Related Variables, she claims to have dealt with a large market (ten states), to have had a wide scope of assignment, handling legislative bills and sessions, and working without supervision. Finally, addressing the third heading of the value to the business of promoting in place, she asserts that her knowledge of and contacts in the ten states she covered warranted such promotion. 27 Unfortunately, plaintiff passes over three of the documents in the SGA Plan which specifically relate only to state managers. We have already quoted from the statement of Objectives. Even more specific is the page entitled, A Proposed Clarification of SG 11 Assignments. Here is set out intricate considerations governing promotion to SG 11. For example, a state manager of an A state with responsibility for regulatory and state and/or federal legislative matters could be eligible. If such a manager has no regulatory responsibility, he may be eligible for an 11 if he has responsibility for one or more committee or subcommittee chairs in the House or Senate who have major impact on AT & T. The remainder of the page, similarly precise, discusses other possibilities and indicates where a state manager of a C or B state may not exceed a 10 or even a 9. But all of the discussion relates to lobbyists. The third component passed over by plaintiff is the list of the fifty states, indicating the state managers responsible for each and some of the data relevant to their responsibilities. 28 In addition to her effort to bring herself within the bounds of the written flex plan, plaintiff has pointed us to various pieces of evidence in the record to support her claim that before SGA was organized, Public Affairs had a flex plan that was applicable to regional attorneys and that this plan was essentially carried over into SGA. She also claims that, in any event, her own contact duties (i.e., lobbyist's functions) were substantial and that therefore she should be treated as a lobbyist. 29
30 We have sifted through the record to identify and assess all of the evidence plaintiff marshals in her effort to establish that there was a flex plan in SGA that applied to regional attorneys as well as to lobbyists. 31 Plaintiff first points to a June 9, 1988 memorandum from the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs (one of the antecedent organizations later merged into SGA), Gerald Lowrie, stating that Public Affairs career paths were being established ranging from SG 8 to SG 11 and that regional attorneys were included along with regional and state directors and others. Lowrie, in his deposition, acknowledged that in the old Public Affairs department, one who had not been a lobbyist had the opportunity to progress to SG 11. Under the former policy, grade 11 position was reserved for a small segment who were assigned not only analytical duties but government advocate responsibilities, national political organization, lead for other IPP's (Issue and Policy Professionals), etc. He explained that this was intended to address the needs of advocates who are terribly important to the corporation--wanted some assurance that they could stay advocates and still get some opportunity to move. Of course, he is referring to the application of the flex plan before the reorganization of departments into SGA and FGA. 32 Three bits of evidence adduced by plaintiff refer to comments that the Public Affairs flex plan was carried over into SGA when it took over from External Affairs and Public Affairs. The first such is a December 1990 memorandum of Lowrie, briefly referring to the External Affairs and the Public Affairs Plans, pointing out that the former included only contact personnel, while the latter included all. But the memorandum goes on to say that the purpose of a meeting in the near future is to review these plans in connection with the impending reorganization. 33 The second is deposition testimony by Central Region Vice President William Clossey that, as far as [he] knew, the major change in the operation of the flex plan that occurred after the internal reorganization was that certain headquarter jobs were made eligible. Plaintiff argues that his failure specifically to remember that regional attorneys were made ineligible is evidence that they were eligible. In context, however, it was made clear repeatedly that, after the reorganization, the flex plan applied only to lobbyists. Adding headquarter jobs with contact positions was consistent with the plan. 2 34 The third offering along this line was testimony of an administrative support manager, Tim Newens, that, to the best of his recollection, after the merger of Public and External Affairs, the old Public Affairs flex plan was just administered to State Government Affairs employees. But, after reviewing the document with which we began our discussion, the State Government Affairs flex plan, he testified: 35 The group of documents provides enough information ... for myself to conclude that the jobs identified here are for contact positions in Government Affairs. 36 The other bits of testimony purport to show that the SGA flex plan did apply to regional attorneys. 37 The head of the Communications Policies group in FGA, Michael Baudhuin, said that, as best he could recall, the flex plan was available to all professionals in his group. But from what appears, all such professionals were involved with technology-oriented lobbying with various regulatory staffs and officials. Plaintiff stated in a December, 1993 affidavit that a human resources manager for Law and Government Affairs, Geraldine Fudge, had told her that a regional attorney could be upgraded under the flex plan (presumably of SGA). In an earlier (April, 1993) deposition, however, Fudge had testified that she did not know whether a regional attorney could be upgraded in this manner. An equally dubious piece of evidence submitted by plaintiff was the testimony of T. Waldmann-Williams, a Human Resources District Manager, that regional attorneys fell under part of the flex plan, i.e., between grades eight and ten. As to SG 11, the testimony is: 38 There is a salary grade eleven in there that I believe it falls under for contact and contact-related types of positions.... But I thought that, if I recall right, regional attorneys didn't fall under the SG eleven. 39 Finally, plaintiff states that throughout 1991, defendant Brown was continually making promises of getting an SG 11 for her. Plaintiff argues that, because there were so few SG 11 and SG 12 vacancies at the time, Brown must have been promising to promote plaintiff through the flex plan; this, in turn, supports the inference that she was eligible for promotion under the plan. This inference approaches the vanishing point, however, in light of Brown's deposition testimony detailing his efforts to gain a promotion for plaintiff by advocating that she receive the Washington, D.C. job offer, by exploring reconfiguring a position that would be an interim step to a Vice Presidency at SG 12, and by discussing the possibility of upgrading the position of Director of Operations Analysis. All of these efforts, Brown testified, were predicated on his basic knowledge that one could not be promoted in place as a regional attorney. 40 In short, what all this boils down to is that there are a few snippets of testimony that under the old Public Affairs plan it might have been possible for regional attorneys to have been upgraded, although even here it is dubious whether a jury could so find upon a preponderance of the evidence. In any event, the evidence that any such possibility carried over into the new State Government Affairs department is overwhelmingly refuted by the plain facts that no regional attorney was ever so promoted, and that the written description of the flex plan so clearly contemplates lobbyist-type jobs. But plaintiff has yet another alternative argument: her job, because of its numerous contact duties, in fact came within this description.
41 Plaintiff testified in her deposition, in November of 1992, about her duties as a regional attorney and how they differed from those of a lobbyist. She had done some lobbying, but after she became a full time regional attorney she did not do lobbying. She stresses, however, that she talked with some legislators, went to some meetings and hearings, sometimes testified, planned, strategised, negotiated and drafted, reviewed legislative bulletins and bills, decided when additional input was needed, and sometimes drafted proactive legislation. 42 But it was clear to her what the lobbyists did that she did not do: maintain contacts with legislators and staff members; keep an eye on how things were moving through the legislature; recommend to AT & T people who voted in PACs how to distribute PAC dollars; be primarily responsible for understanding the political climate; attend fund raisers regularly, be[ ] there (in the legislature) on foot; try to get commitments on how legislators were going to vote in committee or on the floor. She could think of only one legislator with whom she kept more regularly in touch than with others, and even here she would see him only jointly with a lobbyist. 43 A year later, in December, 1993, plaintiff executed an affidavit, enlarging on her contacts with the legislator, adding another name, and generally asserting numerous other activities that involved external contacts with state legislators, legislative staff members, and others. This effort to manufacture an issue of fact by adding the gloss of a subsequent affidavit to an earlier deposition is to no effect. As we said in McCarthy v. Kemper Life Ins. Companies, 924 F.2d 683, 687 (7th Cir.1991), one cannot by affidavit effectively oppose a motion for summary judgment by contradicting his own deposition testimony. Plaintiff's present attempt to explain her deposition testimony as referring only to the job of a registered lobbyist does not reach the exculpatory level of confusion or lack of access to all material facts, which we recognized in Miller v. A.H. Robins Co., Inc., 766 F.2d 1102, 1104 (7th Cir.1985). 44 Having carefully considered all of plaintiff's submissions, we conclude that she has failed to put forward enough evidence to justify the inference that defendants failed to promote her because she is a woman. It is questionable whether plaintiff was even eligible for promotion under the plan pursuant to which the lobbyists were promoted. Even if she was, the criteria for promotion seem so overwhelmingly-oriented to lobbyists that, absent other evidence of discriminatory motive, her failure to be promoted logically raises no inference of discrimination. In other words, the theoretical possibility that defendants could have stretched the criteria of the flex plan to promote her to SG 11 does not make their failure to do so gender-based. By its own terms, the flex plan was geared to lobbyists, and, as implemented, it was never used to promote any regional attorneys, male or female. Furthermore, over the years, plaintiff received very favorable treatment from defendants, including the near doubling of her salary within a six year period, the payment of tuition and grant of necessary time off to allow her to pursue her Ph.D., and an offer to promote her to SG 11 if she accepted a Washington, D.C. position. Finally, there is no direct evidence whatsoever of any discriminatory animus. Based on this record, no rational juror could conclude that defendants failed to promote plaintiff under the flex plan because of her gender. Cf. Rand v. CF Industries, Inc., 42 F.3d 1139 (7th Cir.1994) (granting summary judgment because evidence allows no reasonable inference of discrimination to be drawn).