Opinion ID: 396311
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Discipline and Harassment

Text: 78 Employee reports, which are issued by first-level supervisors, record reprimands and disciplinary actions. The work rules and appropriate punishments are posted, but during the relevant period no written standards covered the issuance of employee reports. Thus, a supervisor's discretionary judgment controlled whether or not to write up an employee report, although the approval of the Labor Relations Office was required before a report could issue and become part of an employee's file. Employee reports are kept in two employee folders and are supposed to be expunged at certain intervals, although this is not always done. Disciplinary sanctions range from oral warnings, to reprimands, to disciplinary actions, to discharges. Absence from work is the most common reason for issuance of an employee report, with the data regarding attendance being obtained from time-clock records. 79 The employees presented evidence to show that black employees received a disproportionate number of reprimands and disciplines. The court found that the data showed a statistically significant disparity in every year from 1966 to 1971, the year in which this action was filed. 437 F.Supp. at 1138. For example, in 1969 thirteen percent of the P&M employees were black, but they received 28.6% of the reprimands, 29.8% of the disciplines, and 30% of the severe disciplines. 11 The court also found that two black employees suffered racial harassment by white supervisors. 80 Boeing Vertol presented data comparing the percentage of new hires who were black to the percentages of reprimands and disciplines to blacks, in an effort to correlate inexperience with disciplinary actions. Thus, in 1969, the sample year discussed above, 20.4% of all new hires were black, which significantly reduced-although it did not eliminate-the disparity apparent in the employees' statistics. Boeing Vertol did not produce data to prove its underlying assumption that new employees had more disciplinary problems than other employees. It presented testimony, however, that there was a high rate of attendance problems with minority employees during periods of active hiring, and the district court found that attendance was the most common disciplinary problem. Boeing Vertol also presented evidence showing that it had a corporate policy, which it actively enforced, against harassment of minority employees, that supervisors had been disciplined for using improper language with employees, and that supervisors were required to attend sensitivity programs to make them aware of the problems of black employees. 81 The district court concluded that the employees had failed to meet the burden of proving  'more than isolated or accidental or sporadic discriminatory acts'  and that they had not established by a preponderance of the evidence that racial discrimination in harassment and discipline was the company's standard operating procedure. 437 F.Supp. at 1191 (quoting Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 336, 97 S.Ct. at 1855). With regard to the claim of classwide harassment, the court noted, and we concur, that much of the supporting testimony was vague as to the time and place and persons involved, concerned events occurring before March 1968, and was related to individual actions not necessarily demonstrating a pattern or practice of racial harassment. 82 Regarding the class claim of discriminatory discipline, the court noted that the employees had failed to rebut Boeing Vertol's statistical evidence correlating discipline with new hires. It considered inexperience to be as reasonable an explanation of the disparities as is race. 437 F.Supp. at 1191-92. Although the court found that the subjective judgment of supervisors was controlling in issuing employee reports, it considered Boeing Vertol's safeguards against arbitrary action and its policy against racial harassment to be a significant factor in interpreting the discipline statistics. It was persuaded that the statistics could be partially explained by the hiring patterns of Boeing Vertol. Furthermore, it was not presented with more than isolated evidence tending to prove the black employees were reprimanded or disciplined when they did not deserve such treatment, or that white employees who violated company rules went unpunished. See 3 Larson, Employment Discrimination § 86.10 (1981) (importance of proof that white employees not disciplined or disciplined differently for same conduct). 83 The employees contend that individual acts of harassment and wrongful discipline supported their claim that Boeing Vertol engaged in a pattern or practice of such discrimination. The court found that two employees, Croker and Travis, proved individual claims of discriminatory harassment. In light of Boeing Vertol's corporate policy against racial harassment and its affirmative steps taken to implement this policy, which included disciplining white supervisors who engaged in these practices, the court was not required to infer a pattern or practice of classwide harassment from the isolated actions of individual supervisors. See, e. g., DeGrace v. Rumsfeld, 614 F.2d 796, 805 (1st Cir. 1980). 84 Finally, the employees do not contest the finding of the district court that (t)he goal of the Company's disciplinary system is to provide employees with an opportunity to correct deficiencies in work or behavior, or the court's finding that discipline was a serious problem to Boeing Vertol in the late 1960's. See 437 F.Supp. at 1152-53. The record supports a conclusion that the disciplinary system had a manifest relation to legitimate employment goals, even if those goals did not actually require implementation of the exact systems being challenged. Thus, even if the employees established a prima facie case, they failed to carry their ultimate burden of proving a title VII violation. See New York Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U.S. 568, 587 n.31, 99 S.Ct. 1355, 59 L.Ed.2d 587 (1979). See also NAACP v. Medical Center, Inc., No. 80-1893, slip op. at 26 (discussing burdens on plaintiffs). 85 We cannot conclude that the court erred in its determination that the employees failed to prove that Boeing Vertol engaged in a pattern or practice of racial discrimination in harassment and discipline. We agree with the employees that they presented a substantial statistical case, but the statistics in this case were not explainable only on the basis of racial discrimination. The district court was in the best position to evaluate the evidence of conflicting explanations for the disparities, and we do not find that it erred in the evaluation it ultimately made.