Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 20, 1994 TAG: 9405200061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The plaintiff, Wallace I. Allen of Roanoke, was a branch administrator when he was terminated by First Union last August. Exhibits included with the suit show that a 49-year-old white man in a similar position was terminated at the same time. They were replaced by a 45-year-old white woman.
Allen, who also seeks $700,000 in punitive damages and reinstatement to his old job, said he was the highest-placed black person with Dominion Bankshares Corp. when that Roanoke banking company was acquired in March 1993 by First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N.C. His suit names both the Roanoke-based bank and its president, Ben Jenkins.
Allen did not return phone calls seeking comment.
But in the suit, he said that the woman who replaced him had previously managed only one branch in Atlanta and was in that job for only for a year. He accused a supervisor of lying to him about her work experience.
Allen said he had several promotions and consistently high performance ratings. At first, he said, he received a letter from First Union stating he would be retained after the banks' merger because of his qualifications and experience. He said he received a good performance rating in April, a merit pay increase in May and a pink slip Aug. 2.
Allen said First Union "has no African-American high-ranking employees and is one of the most 'lily-white' organizations in Virginia."
David Scanzoni, spokesman for First Union, said the company has 4,200 employees in Virginia and one-fifth of them are minorities.
The Virginia bank also has 300 employees in the District of Columbia, with 68 percent of them minorities. Of another 300 workers in Maryland, he said, half are minorities. He offered no breakdown of the racial makeup of administrators.
Scanzoni said First Union cannot comment on the suit while it is in litigation. But he said that "First Union is committed to equal employment opportunities and strives for a diverse work force."
Mark Grunewald, professor of law and associate dean at Washington and Lee University Law School, said discrimination generally is difficult to prove because it is "a motive-based concept. You're talking about the state of mind of the employer."
Grunewald teaches employment law at the Lexington campus. He had not seen the suit and was commenting only in general terms about the law.
In a situation involving a mass layoff, as in the First Union merger, he said it is common to see suits alleging race, age and sex discrimination.
Grunewald said age discrimination is the most usual complaint because some of the highest-paid employees are also the oldest. It's difficult to sort out whether the cause of the discharge is economic or age, he said.
The question is complicated because overtly expressed discrimination is rarely seen, Grunewald said. That often requires making statistical comparisons of age and race before and after a large layoff, he added. Any change in the statistical ratios is suspect.
In an economic discharge situation, Grunewald said, the employer will argue that all layoffs were economic and that the choice of who was to be fired was neutral.
First Union was sued in Northern Virginia last week by 123 former employees of First American Metro Corp., a McLean banking company acquired by First Union last year. They also charged age and race discrimination.
In that merger, First Union discharged 1,000 of the 3,000 former American Metro employees, many of them black middle managers.
In the Dominion merger, 1,200 jobs, about 850 of them in Roanoke, were eliminated in 1992 and 1993.
by CNB