Opinion ID: 343271
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Challenges to the Consent Decree.

Text: 38 The unions all vigorously object to the district court's approval of the settlement between the company and plaintiffs. They insist that the court had no power to substitute a Title VII remedy negotiated by a small group of employees and the company for the August, 1972, collectively bargained Title VII remedy, without any finding that the latter is unsatisfactory under Title VII. 9 We find ourselves in substantial agreement with the unions' contention. 39 Before a court can grant any relief in a Title VII suit, it must find that the defendants engaged in the unlawful employment practice alleged in the complaint. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-5(g); Cf. United States v. T.I.M.E.-D.C., Inc., supra at 319. The amended complaint in the instant case, filed exactly one month after the unions and the company executed the 1972 supplemental labor agreements, alleged that the unions entered into collective bargaining agreements which tend to perpetuate the effects of the company's discriminatory acts by failing to provide carryover, or plant, seniority. In addition, the amended complaint alleged that the unions had and were continuing to violate their duty of fair representation by among other things, failing to negotiate or to attempt to negotiate the elimination of the offending bargaining agreement provisions. The amended complaint thus raised substantial questions concerning perpetuation of discrimination both in the past and at present. There is an important reason for distinguishing between past and present discrimination, for different remedies are involved. Back pay is the remedy for past wrongs; injunctive and other equitable relief is the remedy for continuing wrongs. Pettway v. American Cast Iron Pipe Company, supra at 253. It is clear that once a seniority system is found to be discriminatory, a district court's power to modify it is not affected by the fact that it is a product of the collective bargaining process. Franks v. Bowman Transportation Company, supra at 415; Vogler v. McCarty, Inc., 451 F.2d 1236, 1238 (5th Cir.1971). 40 The order here appealed from clearly contained findings that the seniority system perpetuated, as the court frequently stated in its order, until 1972 or from 1965-72, the effects of the company's pre-Act discriminatory actions. 392 F.Supp. at 418, 419. As we have concluded in part III above, those findings are sufficient for back pay liability to attach to the unions. However, nowhere in its order did the court state or even imply that the supplemental labor agreements were inadequate to end the Title VII violations. Indeed, the court's language, as for example, that the seniority system prevailing from 1965 to 1972 was a substantial factor in perpetuating discrimination, that blacks were locked-in due to that system, and that it was only after ... the 1972 Supplemental Labor Agreements that significant numbers of black employees sought and received transfers, 392 F.Supp. at 419, 424, 430, can logically be read to mean that perpetuation of discrimination ended with those collectively bargained agreements. Further, in its order approving the settlement, the court made no finding with respect to the adequacy or inadequacy of the supplemental labor agreements. The court simply stated that [a]n examination of the proposed Consent Decree shows that it follows generally settlements and decrees in other cases involving similar problems in the same industry. See, e.g., United Papermakers and Paperworkers v. United States, 416 F.2d 980 (5th Cir.1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 919, 90 S.Ct. 926, 25 L.Ed.2d 100 (1970). That seminal case, however, did not authorize wholesale revisions of a seniority system absent a finding of present perpetuation. The district court in that case had specifically found that the seniority system presently discriminates against Negro employees. 416 F.2d at 985. 41 Since the district court approved the consent decree, the law in this circuit has been significantly clarified. Two recent cases involving paper mills have established that actual findings of inadequacy in the current collective bargaining agreement are the prerequisite to modifying it. See Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra; Stevenson v. International Paper Company, supra. In both of those cases findings of defects in the seniority systems, as previously modified by memoranda of understanding, preceded affirmative relief. 530 F.2d at 1173, 1183; 516 F.2d at 112-13, 114. In Stevenson this court noted that some of the defective aspects of the seniority system had already been voluntarily renegotiated since suit was filed and that therefore the effect [of those defects] on possible injunctive relief may be minimal. 516 F.2d at 113. Again taking note of the intervening voluntary changes, this court stated that [o]n remand, the district court should now examine the new system, including the residency period for each job, if challenged by plaintiffs.... Id. at 114. In speaking to the broader issue of the approach courts should take in exercising their remedial powers on neutral practices, the court in Stevenson said: 42 [A] neutral seniority system should not be enjoined totally, but should be modified only as it applies to those employees who were previously subjected to discrimination, only to the extent necessary to remove the elements perpetuating that discrimination, and only for a limited period of time. 43 516 F.2d at 118. 44 See also Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra at 1174. Watkins and Stevenson thus make it clear that before a district court can modify seniority provisions there must be a challenge by the plaintiffs to the present provisions and a finding by the court that the present provisions still perpetuate discriminatory effects of prior action. 45 Appellees argue that the supplemental labor agreements are inadequate on their face and that such inadequacy allowed the district court to approve major changes in the seniority provisions without specific findings of defects in those provisions. It is settled that the rightful place doctrine governs the judicial remedies for Title VII violations. Franks v. Bowman Transportation Corporation, 424 U.S. 747, 763, 96 S.Ct. 1251, 1264, 47 L.Ed.2d 444, 463 (1976); Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra at 1167-68; United States v. T.I.M.E.-D.C., Inc., supra at 317. Under that doctrine courts are to grant affirmative relief to give discriminatees the opportunity to achieve positions that would have been theirs absent discrimination. However, the burden is on plaintiffs seeking modifications of neutral provisions to show that the presence or absence of a particular provision constitutes a practical impediment to achievement of rightful places. Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra at 1174; Stevenson v. International Paper Company, supra at 113. 46 This burden has become merely theoretical in some instances, however, as this court has found certain types of provisions to be virtually necessary per se to achievement of rightful places. Swint v. Pullman-Standard, 539 F.2d 77, 102 (5th Cir.1976); Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra. Four such categories of provisions relevant to curing the instant perpetuation of discrimination have been identified. Required in virtually all cases like the instant one are provisions for: (1) posting of notices of vacancies and a system of bidding for the jobs based on plant, not department or line, seniority, e.g., Swint v. Pullman-Standard, supra at 101-02; United States v. T.I.M.E.-D.C., Inc., Supra at 319-20; (2) carryover of plant seniority for the standard job security purposes, e.g., Swint v. Pullman-Standard, supra; Watkins v. Scott Paper Company, supra at 1175; Sagers v. Yellow Freight System, Inc., supra; Pettway v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., supra at 236, 247-48; United Papermakers and Paperworkers v. United States, supra at 997-98; (3) red circling, or rate of pay protections, e.g., Swint v. Pullman-Standard, supra; Watkins v. Scott Paper Co., supra at 1173-74; Pettway v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., supra at 223-24, 248-49; and (4) job-skipping and advanced level entry for qualified class members, e.g., Watkins v. Scott Paper Co., supra at 1183-84; Stevenson v. International Paper Co., supra at 114; Pettway v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., supra at 248-49. 47 Appellees recognize that the supplemental labor agreements contain effective provisions for posting and bidding, carryover of seniority, and red circling, but contend that those agreements are obviously defective for not containing provisions for job-skipping and advanced level entry, thus requiring no specific finding of inadequacy. We partially agree with this argument. When an existing agreement does not contain one of the four types of provisions discussed above and a court orders inclusion of such a provision, a finding that such a provision was necessary under the rightful place doctrine can be implied. Beyond those four categories, however, Stevenson and Watkins still require a specific finding that the modification is necessary. The supplemental labor agreements in the instant case provided only for posting and bidding on vacancies in starting jobs in lines of progression or in the next highest job in lines in which the starting job is filled by employees who have waived the right to advance (those who have deadened themselves). As we held in Watkins, the requirement that jobs be held in sequential order in any line of progression [clearly] has the tendency to 'lock in' formerly discriminated against blacks. 530 F.2d at 1183. The district court therefore was entitled to treat the supplemental agreements as defective on their face and to order inclusion of job-skipping provisions. The job-skipping provision approved by the court was consistent with our past holdings that qualified discriminatees be allowed to bid for jobs beyond the next step in their or other lines of progression. See Pettway, supra, at 248; United States v. Hayes International Corp., 456 F.2d 112, 116-19 (5th Cir.1972); Long v. Georgia Kraft Co., 450 F.2d 557, 562 (5th Cir.1971). However, the court also approved a closely related scheme giving senior bidders the right to have jobs in a line of progression frozen for them as long as they continue to progress satisfactorily in making whatever sequential advances are needed to qualify for the positions. 10 Such freezing provisions have not had the kind of considered scrutiny by courts in this circuit that the four types of provisions discussed above have had. Since the district court did not make any findings even suggesting that the supplemental agreements were defective in not containing freezing provisions, it would be premature for us to consider the issue. Consequently, upon remand the court should make a specific inquiry and specific findings whether freezing is required under the rightful place doctrine. 48 The Stevenson-Watkins rule that modifications of neutral contract provisions be supported by findings as to the inadequacy of the existing contract has special force where the court is asked to approve a settlement negotiated by a minority of the employees and the employer, including modifications of the collective bargaining agreement which the union has already sought to bring into compliance with Title VII. This is not a case of continuing employer-union adherence to pre-Title VII arrangements. Here the parties voluntarily agreed to modify their collective bargaining agreements to include most of the drastic, but now standard, remedial provisions we have required. Such voluntary compliance should not be ignored, but rather encouraged. Naturally, the parties remain liable for back pay for their errors of the past. But regardless of past wrongs, a court in considering prospective relief is not automatically empowered to make wholesale changes in agreements negotiated by the employees' exclusive bargaining agents in an obviously serious attempt to comply with Title VII. Allowing such changes without findings of inadequacy in the revised agreements would conflict with the policies reflected in the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 151 et seq. (NLRA). 49 We are reminded that while Title VII expresses an important national policy, it does not exist in a vacuum. Important national policies also emanate from the NLRA, among them the principle that terms and conditions of employment are to be shaped by the employer and the exclusive bargaining representative of its employees. In Emporium Capwell Co. v. Western Addition Community Organization, 420 U.S. 50, 95 S.Ct. 977, 43 L.Ed.2d 12 (1975), the Supreme Court discussed the manner in which the policies of these two statutes are to be reconciled and accommodated. The precise issue in Emporium Capwell was whether, in light of the national policy against racial discrimination in employment, the National Labor Relations Act protects concerted activity by a group of minority employees to bargain with their employer over issues of employment discrimination. Id. at 52, 95 S.Ct. 977, 980, 43 L.Ed.2d at 17. The court of appeals had held that black employees were entitled to deal directly with their employer in an effort to cure alleged racially discriminatory practices, bypassing the union. The court of appeals reasoned that concerted activity directed against racial discrimination enjoys a 'unique status' by virtue of the national labor policy against discrimination, as expressed in both the NLRA ... and in Title VII. Id. at 58-59, 95 S.Ct. 977, 983, 43 L.Ed.2d at 21. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Marshall, reversed the court of appeals. It refused to carve out a limited exception to the exclusive bargaining principle for the curing of discrimination. 50 The Court's reasoning is germane here. It perceived dangers to Title VII interests in allowing minority-faction bargaining: 51 The decision by a handful of employees to ... attempt ... to bargain with their employer ... may or may not be predicated upon the actual existence of discrimination.... Competing claims on the employer's ability to accommodate each [minority] group's demands, e.g., for reassignments and promotions to a limited number of positions, could only set one group against the other.... The potential for conflict between the minority and other employees in this situation is manifest ... [t]he likelihood of making headway against discriminatory practices would be minimal.... 52 Id. at 67-69, 95 S.Ct. 977, 987-988, 43 L.Ed.2d at 26-27. 53 In addition, the Court saw such circumvention of the union as a threat to the institution of collective bargaining, the central concern of the NLRA: 54 Whether [minority employees' rights to be free of racial discrimination] are thought to depend upon Title VII or have an independent source in the NLRA, they cannot be pursued at the expense of the orderly collective-bargaining process contemplated by the NLRA. The elimination of discrimination and its vestiges is an appropriate subject of bargaining ... [W]hile a union cannot lawfully bargain for the establishment or continuation of discriminatory practices ..., it has a legitimate interest in presenting a united front on this issue and in not seeing its strength dissipated and its stature denigrated by subgroups within the unit separately pursuing what they see as separate interests.... 55 Id. at 69-70, 95 S.Ct. 977, 988, 43 L.Ed.2d at 27-28. 56 Emporium Capwell, of course, did not involve negotiations in the context of a pending Title VII action. Obviously, when some of the employees become plaintiffs in a Title VII action, they acquire a status as litigants to discuss with the employer and the union the grounds upon which they are willing to settle their lawsuit. But the teachings of Emporium Capwell have application to the court's proper role in adjudicating Title VII actions. And the circumstances of this case point to one such application: a court may not allow the substitution of a solution for past discrimination negotiated between the employer and the plaintiffs for that achieved through collective bargaining unless it first determines that the collectively bargained solution either violates Title VII or is inadequate in some particular to cure the effects of past discrimination. 57 The ramifications of Emporium Capwell and related problems are thoroughly examined in Lopatka, Protection Under the National Labor Relations Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for Employees Who Protest Discrimination in Private Employment, 50 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1179 (1976). Professor Lopatka argues that the union's function under the NLRA as mediator of various employee interests must be respected when a minority seeks to effect changes in the collective bargaining agreement directly with the employer. Id. at 1246-49. He observes that courts are themselves divided over the need for particular provisions to remedy Title VII violations and that when a union has chosen from among arguably acceptable alternatives, a minority of employees should not be given free reign to upset the union's bargain simply because the faction or a court might have subjectively deemed other alternatives better. There are enormous gray areas in the range of remedies for past Title VII violations. As we have noted above, provisions for posting and bidding, carryover seniority, red circling, and job-skipping are not gray areas in this circuit. Thus, if the union has not achieved inclusion of one of those items in the context of an employment practice history such as that presented here, a court can approve such a provision negotiated by the discriminatee faction directly with the employer without any specific proof of the inadequacy of the collective bargaining agreement. Beyond those four categories are gray areas where it is not to be presumed that minority-proposed changes are required under the rightful place doctrine. In addition, there are gray areas within the four categories where fine questions of wording and implementation are involved. Where a union has made a serious attempt to bring the labor contract into full compliance with Title VII, as is clear here, a court should defer to the union's bargained-for remedies in these gray areas unless the discriminatees prove that specific changes are necessary in order for them to reach their rightful places. 58 An example of one of these gray areas is the precise language to be used in describing red circling. In the 1972 supplemental labor agreements, red circling was provided whenever an employee transferred to a new line of progression in which the highest job paid more than the job from which he transferred. The consent decree, however, affords rate retention to a transferee only if the highest job in his new line of progression pays more than the highest paying job in the line of progression from which he transferred. Appellants argue that the consent decree is thus less beneficial to the plaintiffs than that contained in the supplemental agreements, for if an employee contemplating transfer holds a job paying less than the highest job in another line but there are jobs above him in his present line that pay more than the highest job in that other line, he will not get rate retention under the consent decree though he would have gotten it under the 1972 agreements. Appellees even on appeal have not tried to demonstrate the need for the red circling description of the consent decree. Rather, they argue that the unions' objection is merely theoretical, for no blacks have jobs as hypothesized by the unions. Thus appellees' argument is that it makes no difference which alternative description is used. We have held that the burden was on plaintiffs to show that their alternative is required under the rightful place doctrine. Court approval of alternative wording that is admittedly unnecessary greatly derogates from the unions' role under the NLRA and must be reversed. 59 The unions devote considerable argument to the definition of the affected class' in the consent decree. The supplemental labor agreements define the affected class to include females as well as blacks. As a result, the right to transfer with plant seniority and rate retention is available to women as well as blacks. The senior affected class member bidder, whether black or female, is to be given an available position in his or her own line of progression or an entry level position in another line. The consent decree, however, defines affected class as blacks only, and under its bidding system the Affected Class Employee with the most plant seniority shall be awarded the job opening. Since the terms of the consent decree supersede and replace those in the supplemental labor agreements, the decree subordinates senior females to junior blacks. 60 The unions argue strenuously that the company's policy in implementing the consent decree has been to deprive white females of the rights they gained under the supplemental labor agreements. However, the rights of white females and the company's implementation policy are not at issue in this case. The issue here is the proper accommodation by the district court of national policies underlying the NLRA and Title VII. On that issue we have held that before ordering or approving changes in a collective bargaining agreement, the court must find that the modifications are necessary under the rightful place doctrine; once plaintiffs have made a showing that specific modifications are required, the court is obligated to order or to approve the modifications. The unions are of course correct in expressing concern about the rights of white females under the 1972 agreements. Those rights could not be affected by the consent decree, since white females and some blacks who are included in the affected class under the 1972 agreements were not parties to the instant litigation. The company admits in their brief that the rights of those not included in the affected class of the consent decree are not affected by it. Indeed, if the company does not recognize the rights of affected class members under the 1972 agreements it may have to respond in damages to those employees. See McAleer v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 416 F.Supp. 435 (D.D.C.1976). Although the unions have an interest, and indeed a duty, in asserting the rights of females under the 1972 agreement, we do not understand their concern over the company's agreement to seemingly inconsistent obligations. 61