Opinion ID: 351700
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Stewardess and Purser Positions

Text: 3 Between 1927 and 1947, all cabin attendants employed on NWA's aircraft were women, whom NWA classified as stewardesses. 8 In 1947, when the company initiated international service, it established a new cabin-attendant position of purser, 9 and for two decades thereafter adhered to an undeviating practice of restricting purser jobs to men alone. 10 In implementation of this policy, NWA created another strictly all-male cabin-attendant classification flight service attendant to serve as a training and probationary position for future pursers. 11 NWA has maintained a combined seniority list for pursers and flight service attendants, on which seniority as pursers accrued to flight service attendants immediately upon assumption of their duties as such, and a separate seniority list for stewardesses. 12 From 1951 until 1967 flight service attendants had a contractual right to automatic promotion to purser vacancies in the order of their seniority. 13 4 It was not until 1967, when a new collective bargaining agreement was negotiated, that stewardesses first became contractually eligible to apply for purser positions. 14 During negotiations on the issue, NWA, for both the 1967 agreement and another in 1970, rejected an additional union proposal that stewardesses, like flight service attendants, be allowed to progress to purser slots according to seniority, stating that the company prefers males and intends to have them. 15 The company has also insisted upon the right of selectivity in choosing which stewardesses might become pursers, and has imposed other restrictions on stewardesses seeking purser vacancies which had not previously been laid on flight service attendants. 16 5 Company policy had been to fill purser openings by hiring men off the street and training them for a short time, after which notices of purser vacancies would be posted. 17 Following the 1967 collective bargaining agreement affording stewardesses access to these jobs however, NWA hired five male purser-applicants without ever posting notices of the vacancies. 18 In 1970, after three years of ostensibly open admission purser status, NWA had 137 male cabin attendants all as pursers and 1,747 female cabin attendants all but one as stewardesses. 19 6 The sole female purser at that time was Mary P. Laffey, who bid for a purser vacancy in 1967, after nine years' service as a stewardess. 20 Although that purser position was scheduled to be filled in November, 1967, processing of her application was delayed assertedly for the reason that NWA needed to administer new tests to purser applicants. 21 These tests had never previously been used in selecting pursers, and during the interim between Ms. Laffey's application and her appointment NWA hired two male pursers without benefit of any tests. 22 Finally, in June, 1968, Ms. Laffey became a purser, but was placed on the bottom rung of the purser-salary schedule and received less than her income as a senior stewardess. 23 B. Stewardess and Purser Duties 7 On this appeal, NWA does not challenge holdings by the District Court that Title VII was violated by NWA's refusal to hire female pursers. 24 Rather, the appeal focuses primarily on whether the payment of unequal salaries to stewardesses and pursers, while occupying positions as such, implicates Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. The purser wage scale ranges from 20 to 55 percent higher than salaries paid to stewardesses of equivalent seniority. 25 The Equal Pay Act 26 forbids this pay differential unless greater skill, effort or responsibility is required to perform purser duties. 27 Title VII 28 likewise proscribes inferior sex-based compensation plans for women and, additionally, extends its protection to ban conditions of employment imposed discriminatorily upon women employees. 29 8 (1) Flight Assignments 9 In gauging whether NWA's pursers and stewardesses performed equal work, the District Court analyzed in great detail NWA's flight operations and its usage of the three different categories of cabin attendants. NWA flies diverse itineraries, which affect the type of personnel assigned to the flight, and which are categorized by particular terminology. In brief, pure domestic commercial flights are regularly-scheduled commercial flights which begin and end in the United States, and do not continue to the Orient. 30 Other commercial flights originate in one city in the United States, fly to an intermediate destination in the United States, and then on to the Orient; and the intra-United States portions of such trips are known as domestic segments of international flights. 31 Transpacific commercial flights are regularly-scheduled flights between Anchorage, Seattle, Honolulu and Tokyo; while commercial interport flights are regularly scheduled flights between Tokyo and other Asian cities. 32 Military air charters are flights contracted with the United States Government to provide regularly-scheduled military air charter service. 33 10 Pure domestic commercial flights are, with some exceptions, 34 served exclusively by stewardesses and flight service attendants. 35 Pursers are ordinarily utilized on interport flights, transpacific commercial flights, domestic segments of international flights, and on all types of charters, military or otherwise, including pure domestic flights. 36 Since 1967, the company has also maintained a crew of stewardesses with proficiency in one or more foreign languages, who are assigned to certain international flights. 37 11 NWA schedules a different cabin-attendant crew on each flight segment; one crew will fly the domestic segment, another will take over for the transpacific link, and still a third is used on the interport portion. 38 Pursers and stewardesses bid separately, according to seniority, for monthly schedules. 39 12 (2) Overall Evaluation 13 Probing beneath the different titles, bidding schedules and salaries, the District Court made extensive factual findings comparing the work actually done by pursers and stewardesses, and held it to be essentially equal when considered as a whole. 40 For example, pursers are assigned to the first-class section of the aircraft, which has a smaller passenger load per cabin attendant and a correspondingly more leisurely work pace as compared with the chores inherited by stewardesses assigned to the tourist-class section. 41 The hourly work load also tends to be greater on the short hop domestic schedules than on the longer international flights. 42 14 Duties performed do not differ significantly in nature as between pursers and stewardesses. All must check cabins before departure, greet and seat passengers, prepare for take-off, and provide in-flight food, beverage and general services. 43 All must complete required documentation, maintain cabin cleanliness, see that passengers comply with regulations and deplane passengers. 44 The premier responsibility of any cabin attendant is to insure the safety of passengers during an emergency, and cabin attendants all must possess a thorough knowledge of emergency equipment and procedures on all aircraft. 45 All attendants also must be knowledgeable in first aid techniques and must be able to handle the myriad of medical problems that arise in flight. 46 Food service varies greatly between flights, but pursers engage in no duties that are not also performed on the same or another flight by stewardesses. 47 Another important duty building goodwill between NWA and its passengers depends on the poise, tact, friendliness, good judgment and adaptability of every cabin attendant, male or female. 48 15 (3) Domestic and International Flights 16 The District Court found that when pursers are scheduled on pure domestic flights, their duties are identical to those of stewardesses functioning as senior cabin attendants the most senior purser, or the most senior stewardess on flights with no purser. 49 A substantial percentage of NWA's overall utilization of pursers is on pure domestic flights and domestic segments of international flights. 50 Similarly, a substantial percentage of the company's use of pursers is their assignment to military air charter flights. 51 Many pursers fly flights of these types exclusively for months or years at a time. 52 17 Although, as NWA argues, after January, 1971, pursers as a group have spent more nights away from home than do stewardesses, the District Court found that these longer trips do not constitute substantially dissimilar working conditions from those of other cabin attendants: 53 18 More consecutive days away from home also means more consecutive days at home during the month. The preferences of cabin attendants in this regard are highly subjective some prefer one long trip a month, while others prefer shorter trips; . . . . Because ground time is not counted toward flight time, purser schedules (encompassing longer flights) entail fewer actual hours of work . . . . 54 19 (4) Documentation Tasks 20 With respect to documentation responsibilities, the District Court found that pursers and stewardesses have different, but comparable, duties. 55 Stewardesses alone sell liquor, and are alone required to complete inventory and sales records, and beverage usage reports. 56 On flights carrying tax-free liquor, customs inventory forms must be completed both by stewardesses and pursers, 57 and all cabin attendants are subject to discipline for error. 58 On all flights, the senior cabin attendant and the senior in tourist the senior stewardess in the tourist class must make appropriate entries in the log book, 59 and also prepare an in-flight-service report, seating charts, accident reports and other diverse documents. 60 21 Pursers are responsible for administering international quarantine procedures for passengers, crew and cargo. 61 As the requirements vary from port to port, pursers must keep their knowledge current in order to comply with applicable regulations. 62 These duties, however, are not required on all flights to which pursers are assigned, such as on pure domestic flights on which pursers perform no documentation duties, and on certain domestic segments on which such purser duties are minimal. 63 To boot, pursers are instructed to carry out their international documentation responsibilities at times when no significant passenger service is required, and other cabin attendants perform all other necessary services during those times. 64 The District Court found that the documentary duties described which are . . . assigned only to pursers involved no greater skill, effort or responsibility than . . . the stewardess job. 65 22 (5) Stewardess and Purser Responsibilities 23 The District Court also examined another general, more intangible, duty advanced by NWA as a factor rendering the purser job different in kind from the stewardess position. The company's cabin service manual states that the senior purser on a flight will always be considered the senior cabin attendant and as such must coordinate the activities of the other attendants, and is to be held responsible and accountable for the proper rendering of service on that flight. 66 But the manual further provides that if no purser is scheduled, the most senior stewardess will serve as senior flight attendant and will similarly be charged with coordination of cabin service, although she is accountable only for the conduct of service in the section of the aircraft in which she works, responsibility for the remainder being placed on the senior attendant in the other section of the aircraft. 67 24 Senior cabin attendants, be they purser or stewardess, have a number of supervisory duties. These include monitoring and, where necessary, correcting the work of other cabin attendants; determining the times of meals and movie showings; shifting cabin attendants from section to section to balance workloads; and giving pre-departure briefings on emergency equipment and procedures. 68 On large planes, even if a purser in the first-class section is designated the senior cabin attendant, the senior in tourist shoulders these same burdens in her section of the aircraft overseeing the great majority of passengers and cabin attendants. 69 Stewardess and pursers alike are subject to disciplinary action if they fail to carry out their supervisory responsibilities. 70 25 There is, however, no merit system maintained to reward those who supervise better than others; all pursers and all stewardesses are on uniform, separate wage scales, regardless of whether or how well an individual performs. 71 26 NWA asserts that it hired, trained and promoted male pursers in the belief that they would exercise leadership and be responsible and accountable for the entire cabin service staff, whereas stewardesses functioning as senior cabin attendants on particular flights would be responsible for coordination of cabin service on the entire flight but would be accountable only for the manner of service in their assigned sections of the aircraft. 72 The District Court found that, in practice, this distinction between levels of responsibility and accountability is illusory: 27 Only in the purser's formal relationship with the Company does his accountability differ from the non-purser senior cabin attendant and that difference is derived from status rather than as a function of the job. . . . 73 28 The court found, moreover, that the senior cabin attendant's duties are not substantially greater than the ordinary cabin attendant's function: 29 . . . Cabin service attendants are employed to serve and protect Company passengers. The supervisory functions of senior cabin attendants whether purser or stewardess are less important than, and require no greater skill, effort or responsibility, than the other functions assigned to all cabin attendants. 74 C. The District Court's Conclusions 30 Careful evaluation of the facts comprehensively found led the District Court to conclude that NWA had discriminated against women cabin attendants on the basis of sex, in violation of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act, by compensating stewardesses and pursers unequally for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions. 75 More specifically, the court found that NWA had discriminated in willful violation 76 of the Equal Pay Act 77 (a) by paying female stewardesses lower salaries and pensions than male pursers; (b) by providing female cabin attendants less expensive and less desirable layover accommodations than male cabin attendants; (c) by providing to male but not to female cabin attendants a uniform-cleaning allowance; and (d) by paying Mary P. Laffey a lower salary as a purser than it pays to male pursers with equivalent length of cabin attendant service. 78 All of these same actions were held by the District Court also to be violations of Title VII 79 and the court further held that Title VII violations arose out of other forms of company discrimination, inter alia, (a) in filling purser vacancies; (b) in denying to stewardesses who became pursers the same seniority rights and pay given male flight service attendants similarly promoted; (c) in changing procedural requirements for becoming a purser so as to deter female applicants, even after the 1967 agreement; 80 (d) in erecting a chain of command on flights under which all male cabin attendants, regardless of seniority or classification, were superior to all females; and (e) in imposing on women alone a ban on eyeglasses, prescribed luggage, and weight and height restrictions. 81 31 On this appeal, NWA challenges the District Court's central ruling that disparate compensation for equal work violates Title VII additionally to the Equal Pay Act. 82 It attacks also the court's holding that stewardesses and pursers are entitled to equal pay, 83 and the corollary finding that stewardesses who became pursers were improperly denied credit for their stewardess seniority on the purser seniority list. 84 The company also disputes the court's conclusion that Title VII was violated by its policies regarding cleaning allowances and layover accommodations. 85 Lastly, it objects to the remedial measure adopted by the court to cure the conceded violation as to weight restrictions. 86 These contentions, in turn, we now examine.