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

Heading: Part-Time

Text: 36 The EEOC also argues that the district court erred as a matter of law in failing to consider the EEOC's claims of discrimination regarding part-time hires separately from its claims regarding full-time hires. The EEOC cites no authority for this proposition, but argues that separate consideration of part-time from full-time is compelled by significant differences between part time and full time hires. This is not a question of law; rather, the EEOC must be arguing that the district court clearly erred in failing to find the alleged fact that differences between part-time and full-time hires were significant enough to warrant separate discussion of the part-time figures. One difference, according to the EEOC, is that the mix of products sold was different between full- and part-time, which the EEOC claims is significant because the court based much of its opinion on the nature of the products sold. The other difference mentioned by the EEOC is that Siskin's multicell analysis produced larger disparities for part-time hires than for full-time hires. 37 The district court did not, as the EEOC appears to suggest, ignore or never consider part-time figures. Neither did it completely subsume the part-time within the full-time case. At various points in its opinion the court referred to part-time data and disparities as distinct from full-time data and disparities. It appears that the court did refer to the full-time case more than it did the part-time case, but that may be explained by the fact that the full-time case was emphasized more at trial. 15 Indeed, the court explicitly stated that [f]ull time and part time positions ... were ... analyzed separately [by the parties]. The court will structure its analysis accordingly. Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1288. 38 Although the EEOC analyzed part-time figures separately from full-time figures, it employed the same mode of analysis to part-time and full-time data. Thus the part-time statistics were subject to the same criticisms by the district court as were the full-time statistics. We address these flaws recognized by the district court in more detail later. At this point it is sufficient to note that the part-time analyses, like the full-time analyses, are fraught with design flaws as well as a failure to capture differences in male and female interests and qualifications. In addition, Sears' defense of affirmative action applied to both full- and part-time analyses. To the extent that the part-time figures as well as the full-time figures are misleading and imprecise, the EEOC's claim that differences between part-time and full-time disparities were significant enough to warrant separate consideration of the part-time disparities is without merit. 39 The EEOC also argues that the district court impermissibly failed to recognize a distinction between part-time and full-time hires based on differences in product lines. The EEOC criticizes two of the district court's statements that give the impression, according to the EEOC, that the district court believed commission selling involved solely big ticket items such as major appliances. Such an impression would lead to false conclusions according to the EEOC, because commission selling involved smaller items like shoes as well as big ticket items like furnaces, and big ticket product lines were a small part of part-time hires compared with smaller product lines like shoes. 40 We are unconvinced that the district court clearly erred in failing to recognize a distinction between part-time and full-time figures based on certain product lines in commission sales. First, we do not believe as the EEOC claims, the court based much of its opinion on the nature of the products sold. The two statements cited by the EEOC in support of its claim are [c]ommission selling usually involved 'big ticket' items, meaning high-cost merchandise, such as major appliances, furnaces, air conditioners, roofing, tires, sewing machines, etc., Sears II, 628 F.Supp. at 1289, and the product lines into which 95 percent of Sears' full time commission salespersons were hired included such items as hardware, building supplies, paint and appliances. Id. at 1313 n. 58. These statements do not exclude product lines in which the EEOC claims there was a more persuasive part-time case. Second, these statements are insufficient to convince us that the nature of the products sold was crucial to the district court's reasoning. These are two statements in a seventy-six-page published opinion. We do not believe that the district court failed to address the EEOC's claims of discrimination against part-time employees.