Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409270038
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BIRMINGHAM, ALA. LENGTH: Medium
More than 30 black Norfolk Southern railway employees from Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Ohio attended a hearing Friday before U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon in Birmingham, Ala. He will decide whether to grant their request, which is to certify a group of about 600 black employees in clerical and supervisory jobs as a class for trial.
The employees claim that whites are chosen for promotions into non-union management and clerical jobs that blacks most often don't know about because the company doesn't post job vacancies, said Bob Wiggins, one of the lawyers representing the black employees.
Norfolk Southern uses standardized promotional tests, which have been ruled discriminatory in cases against other companies, Wiggins said. The tests were put into effect in 1965, shortly after passage of the Civil Rights Act, he said.
``We contend they were put in to keep blacks out of historically white jobs,'' Wiggins said.
The black employees are asking for back pay and a change in the company's promotion system, Wiggins said. They want the company to get rid of its current tests, to post job vacancies and to develop objective selection procedures with defined criteria for promotions, he said.
Thomas Madden of Atlanta, a 26-year Norfolk Southern employee, testified that job openings generally are known about by word-of-mouth only ``and usually after the position has been assigned.''
Lawyers for Norfolk Southern called no witnesses Friday.
by CNB