Opinion ID: 309662
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: order clerks

Text: 4 For many years Behrens has employed females in its Tyler division warehouse as order clerks. The principal responsibilities of an order clerk include: arranging merchandise on the warehouse shelves, filling customer orders by gathering the requested stock and sending it along to the checker, and restocking the shelves. [App. 211.] Behrens admitted and the district court found that certain male employees, designated sales trainees, performed work substantially equal to that of the female order clerks during the period in question. [App. 211.] 5 Behrens acknowledged that the male sales trainees were paid a higher wage than order clerks for doing the same work, but sought to justify this wage discrepancy as based on a bona fide training program, purportedly constituting a legitimate distinguishing factor other than sex. 6 29 U.S.C. Sec. 206(d)(1) recognizes four exceptions to the general prohibition of disparate wage payments between workers of the opposite sex. The first three exceptions to the Equal Pay Act are specific (a seniority system, a merit system, and a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production), but the last is stated in general terms-any other factor other than sex, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 206(d)(1)(iv). 29 C.F.R. Sec. 800.148, 3 the Secretary's Interpretative Bulletin, expressly designates bona fide training programs as one factor other than sex which may validly produce a male-female wage gap. Behrens contends that its male sales trainees are all participants in a bona fide training program, providing a legitimate basis for their higher wage rate than that of female order clerks. 7 In order to verify the structure of its training program, Behrens offered the testimony of its president, treasurer, Tyler division manager, and four salesmen. 8 Behrens' president, W. Lacy Clifton, admitted that his company's sales training program has never included a woman. [App. 553.] He sought to explain the program's male dominance by reference to its origin: 9 I would say that when this program was started [1946] that females were never considered as suitable for traveling. . . . You think about putting a female out on a job where she might have a flat tire at night. [App. 546.] 10 In recent years, Clifton claimed, inclusion of females in the sales training program has been considered, and one woman, Annette Neeley, was offered a sales job on a temporary basis. Miss Neeley turned the job down for reasons which are contested. 4 However, Clifton admitted that present company policy calls for active solicitation of young men as sales trainees, but not women, and Miss Neeley, while she was offered a sales job, was not offered a position as a sales trainee. [App. 554.] 11 The district court found and both parties, with minor exceptions, agree that the Behrens' sales training program has the following characteristics: 12 1) No written or formal plan of training; 13 2) a regular system of rotation through each of the different warehouse jobs with progression to the next position based on satisfactory familiarity with the position before it; 14 3) no specific identifiable point of termination; 5 15 4) sales trainees are informed upon hiring that they are entering a training program; 16 5) some formal sales training, including meetings, study of sales literature and travel with current salesmen, is provided upon reaching the final job in rotation-the city order desk. [Although the district court made no express finding on this point, testimony to that effect appears at App. pp. 580-582.] 17 In addition, uncontradicted testimony established that a male trainee carries out productive work and rotates through the training program without regard to personnel needs, except that the final advance to the position of salesman is contingent upon an opening in that slot. [App. 561, 562.] 18 In the seminal case interpreting the bona fide training program exception to the Equal Pay Act, Shultz v. First Victoria National Bank, 5 Cir. 1969, 420 F.2d 648, this Court ruled that two separate male-dominated executive training programs for bank tellers did not constitute a factor other than sex which would permit payment of lower wages to female tellers not included in the training programs. Those particular programs were found to be merely postevent justifications for disparate pay to men and women from the commencement of employment up through advancement. Shultz, supra, at 655. 19 The elements of the two bank training programs in Shultz, which that court listed as conclusive of their fatal imprecision, were: 20 1) Employees were not hired with the knowledge that they were trainees. 21 2) The plans were not in writing. 22 3) The rotation of trainees through the various bank positions did not follow any definite sequence, but depended on personnel needs. 23 4) No formal instruction was offered at either bank. 24 5) Neither program had ever included a woman. 25 6) Advancement to the next position was unpredictable and sporadic. 26 Faced with these amorphous bank training plans and strongly influenced by the fact that both programs excluded females, the Shultz court reasoned that judicial recognition of such programs would allow the exception will swallow the rule and effectively undermine the congressional purpose for passing the Equal Pay Act. 6 27 A cursory comparison of the training programs belatedly offered as justification for the unequal pay in Shultz with the program at issue here reveals that the latter is far more concrete than were the former. The Behrens training plan is not a post-event justification. Behrens' sales trainees enter employment with explicit knowledge of their training status. They rotate through the initial warehouse positions without regard to personnel needs, and they receive some formal sales training while serving as city order clerks. 28 Yet, because of the crucial weaknesses in the Behrens training program, which will be treated subsequently, coupled with the genuine concern for women's rights which prompted the Act, 7 we feel that the principles enunciated in Shultz are applicable here. 29 The Behrens sales training program suffers from two principal weaknesses. First, the Behrens trainee's ultimate advancement to the position of salesman depends on, not only satisfactory completion of the training program, but also the fortuitous event of a sales opening. In other words, the termination point of the program is not determinable prior to its actual occurrence, and that termination point is subject to the vagaries of the business climate and the company's personnel needs. 30 Second, the Behrens program is male dominated. No woman has ever participated in the program. While it is true that the issue of whether trainee positions should be open to women is a question to be ultimately resolved only in an action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e (1970), in the manner pursued in Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 5 Cir. 1972, 442 F.2d 385; see Hodgson v. Golden Isles Convalescent Homes, 5 Cir. 1972, 468 F.2d 1256, it is also true that training programs which appear to be available only to employees of one sex will    be carefully examined to determine whether such programs are, in fact, bona fide. 29 C.F.R. Sec. 800.148. 31 Male-dominated training programs subject to the close scrutiny required by Sec. 800.148 have failed to pass appellate tests with increasing frequency. See Hodgson v. Security National Bank of Sioux City, 8 Cir. 1972, 460 F.2d 57, reversing a district court decision ruling that a male-dominated bank management training program was bona fide. See also Hodgson v. Fairmont Supply Co., 4 Cir. 1972, 454 F.2d 490, where the Fourth Circuit (reversing the district court) found a violation of the Equal Pay Act, and declined to recognize a sexoriented sales training program. 32 The spirit behind the Equal Pay Act was eloquently depicted in Shultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., 3 Cir. 1970, 421 F.2d 259, 265: 33 The Act was intended as a broad charter of women's rights in the economic field. It sought to overcome the age-old belief in women's inferiority and to eliminate the depressing effects on living standards of reduced wages for female workers and the economic and social consequences which flow from it. 34 In light of this enunciation of the clear purpose of the Equal Pay Act, a training program coterminus with a stereotyped province called man's work cannot qualify as a factor other than sex. Hodgson v. Fairmont Supply Co., supra, 454 F.2d at 498. 35 In the instant case, Behrens' president, Clifton, testified that women are not solicited as sales trainees because females were never considered as suitable for traveling. This is a clear example of the attitude of male suitability designed to be nullified by the Equal Pay Act. 36 Behrens' sales training procedure is not illusory, nor does it constitute a mere post-event justification for disparate wage payments. Nevertheless, the program has never included a female, and its completion-advancement to a sales job-is entirely dependent on personnel needs. These two program characteristics compel the conclusion that Behrens' training procedure is not a factor other than sex which should excuse denial of equal pay to female workers and remove them from the aegis of the Equal Pay Act. 37 An exemption from the coverage of the Act 'must be narrowly construed.' Phillips, Inc. v. Walling, 324 U.S. 490, 493, 65 S.Ct. 807, 808, 89 L.Ed. 1095 (1945) and Mitchell v. Stinson, 1 Cir., 1954, 217 F.2d 210, 214. The exemptions must be applied only to those 'plainly and unmistakably within its terms and spirit.' Philips, Inc. v. Walling, supra, 324 U.S. at 493, 65 S.Ct. 807. See also Arnold v. Ben Kanowsky, Inc., 361 U.S. 388, 392, 80 S.Ct. 453, 456, 4 L.Ed.2d 393 (1960). 38 Hodgson v. Colonnades, Inc., 5 Cir. 1973, 472 F.2d 42. 39 Until they reach the position of city desk clerk, Behrens' sales trainees participate in no training activities independent of their regular, productive jobs. This fact reinforces the conclusion that male trainees through most of the training period engage in exactly the same activities as female nontrainees and do not warrant statutory exemption from the Equal Pay Act. 40 Behrens advances two subsidiary arguments in support of its training program. First, it contends that the term bona fide training program contained in 29 C.F.R. Sec. 800.148 means simply in good faith without fraud. Although the traditional, common law definition of bona fide may be as liberal as Behrens' claims, see Ware v. Hylton, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 199, 1 L.Ed. 568, the term as used in the regulation at issue here must be construed in light of the statute which that regulation implements. The Equal Pay Act clearly mandates the demise of sex-based wage differences except in special, narrow circumstances A bona fide training program to constitute a valid exception to the Equal Pay Act must represent more than an honest effort; such a program must have substance and significance independent of the trainee's regular job. 41 Behrens also argues that to rule its training program invalid would discriminate against small companies, like itself, who cannot maintain expensive, formal training courses. 8 Certainly, a small corporation with limited resources need not implement as elaborate a training program as those of the corporate giants. But the fact that a corporation is small does not relieve that corporation of its duty to establish a bona fide training program, if it wishes to escape the mandate of the Equal Pay Act. In addition, all training programs which exclude females, whether originated by large companies or small, carry a stigma of suspect validity. 9