THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080437
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HOPE KELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940608 LENGTH: Long
Convinced they are being racially discriminated against, 38 workers at the Portsmouth shipyard, most of them sandblasters, have hired a team of lawyers to bring a class-action suit in federal court.
{REST} Workers on the lower rungs of the job ladder say they are especially vulnerable to layoffs because, under federal civil-service regulations, more senior employees can ``bump down'' to lower-level jobs when their positions are eliminated. Moreover, at a meeting this winter, a yard official warned that a wage level occupied almost entirely by black workers is likely to be the next victim of the Defense Department budget ax.
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard workers are not the only ones accusing the Navy of racial discrimination. A group of black workers in Florida last month filed a $130 million lawsuit accusing Navy installations in the Pensacola area of discrimination against black civilian employees.
The suit - filed by 32 workers, including sandblasters at the Pensacola Naval Air Station - alleges blacks have been denied promotions and training and are underrepresented in management, among other things.
At the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, blacks have long filled most of the lower-level, dirty and dangerous positions, the workers say. Of the 33 sandblasters in their shop - Shop 71 - 32 are black. And almost all the shop workers who do bilge cleaning - an especially nasty task - are black.
To clean bilges, workers have to crawl and wriggle their way into tiny spaces at the very bottom of a ship, where they spray a caustic liquid - heated to about 180 degrees - to strip old paint from the surfaces. Even through a respirator, the acrid stench of the fumes is overpowering, says Earl C. Walton, a 20-year shipyard veteran who is leading the workers' group.
``These are the jobs they orchestrate black workers into and it's no accident,'' he said, sitting in the living room of the Virginia Beach home he shares with his wife and three children.
Walton says that although it's not news that lower-level jobs are occupied largely by black workers, the racial divide is being brought into sharp relief now that the shipyard's work force is being pared and higher-level employees - all employees - are scrambling to stay employed.
``In order to save their jobs they want to take away our jobs,'' Walton said.
The shipyard said it could not comment on the merits of the workers' allegations while the matter is being reviewed. However, a brief filed by a lawyer for the shipyard argues there is no basis for a class-action complaint, and the workers' lawyers say the yard's Equal Employment Opportunity office has tried to hinder their efforts on behalf of the black workers.
The shipyard's work force has been dropping precipitously over the last few years, falling from 11,200 at the end of 1992 to 8,665 at the end of 1993. When the reduction-in-force - or RIF - announced in February takes effect at the end of this month, the payroll will drop to just 7,600 workers. High-ranking Navy officials have projected the shipyard's work force could shrink to 5,338 by the end of 1995, although a Navy office last month amended that figure to 7,200.
Fearful for their jobs, and upset about what they perceive as discriminatory treatment, 38 black members of Shop 71 have hired a team of lawyers to file individual complaints as well as a class-action complaint on behalf of the shop's roughly 80 black employees.
The shop - made up of painters and sandblasters - in early May had 132 people. Of the total, 99 were painters and painters' assistants and 33 were blasters.
Blasting is a demanding, dirty, distinctly unglamorous job. Now, however, with the threat of more layoffs in the air, blasting looks better to those who previously shunned it; there is almost always blasting work to be done.
Starting in March, the leaders of Shop 71 began offering a 10-day blasting course to workers in and outside the shop. Graduates receive a form certifying them as blasters.
Walton says he and his colleagues were dismayed to learn that workers at higher pay grades were angling for their positions. It had taken them three to four years to qualify for their present blasting jobs, and now they stood to be replaced by people who'd taken a 10-day course.
The black blasters see themselves in a no-win situation. Other - mainly white - workers can move down into the black blasters' positions, but the black blasters say they have been consistently frustrated in their attempts to move up.
According to Walton and the other black workers:
When they'd asked for training - as insulators, for example - they were turned down.
Though they often work outside their trade - usually as painters - the blasters get no additional recognition or compensation. Painters in the shop are wage grade 9s; blasters are 7s.
Black blasters have been refused training in state-of-the-art techniques that are likely to replace traditional sandblasting; that work is done in another shop by white workers.
In Walton's 20 years at the yard, no black blaster has ever been promoted to painter, although white blasters have been promoted. The shop does have black painters, however.
Black employees are frequently sent to the ``excess labor'' shop to perform menial tasks while temporaries, both black and white, are brought in to do their jobs, often earning overtime as well.
Painting supervisors are the only members of Shop 71 allowed to attend planning meetings, which means blasters can't control the jobs they are to perform. If a painter orders the wrong blasting equipment or too much material, it is the blasters who are blamed for cost overruns and wind up with a bad performance evaluation - which increases their vulnerability to layoff.
Walton is supremely frustrated: ``I'm good at my work, but I have no control whatsoever.''
The black workers of Shop 71 aren't just idly worried about more layoffs. At a March meeting of the shipyard's Federal Managers Association, painter Carl L. Phillips says, he was told that level 7 workers - almost all of whom are black - would be eliminated in the next round of cuts. Most workers below that level already have been let go.
According to Phillips, the yard's production resources officer, Capt. Gerry Blanton, told him that because workers at wage grades 10 and 11 can perform the work of lower-level employees - while level 7 workers aren't officially qualified to do higher-grade jobs - the 7s are expendable.
The black workers had expected as much. ``They act like they're preparing us to fail,'' said Jesse Coley, a blaster who's been at the yard for almost 17 years.
But Coley, Walton and other black members of Shop 71 don't think of themselves as failures. That's why they're pooling their money to pay for lawyers.
``What we're just trying to do is be treated fair,'' Walton said.
The workers don't have to prove the shipyard is intentionally discriminating against them to win their case. All they have to prove is the yard's practices or policies are hurting blacks more than white workers.
``The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that a policy or practice that weeds out a disproportionate number of minorities - unless the company can show a legitimate business reason - is discriminatory, and motive or intent is irrelevant,'' said Carol E. Summers, who specializes in employment law at Clark & Stant in Virginia Beach. Summers is not involved in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard case.
SuAnne L. Hardee, one of the lawyers hired by the workers' group, says the shipyard's practices and policies are indeed having a disproportionate impact on blacks.
``They've applied arbitrary categories to people without relation to their skill level, so on the face of it the yard can say, `It's lower-skilled workers - not black workers - that are being RIF'd,' '' she said. ``Scratch the surface, though, and these categories are arbitrary and the employees with the most skills (stand to be) RIF'd while those without the skills - those who take the 10-day blasting course, for example'' stand to be kept on.
The lawyers are following the administrative procedures of the shipyard's Equal Employment Opportunity office but plan to file suits in federal court within the next several months.
Top-ranking yard EEO officials have been openly hostile to their efforts, the workers and lawyers say.
Workers say EEO officials - who are supposed to investigate all reports of discrimination - told them their claims were baseless before any investigation was done. They also say EEO officials violated requests for confidentiality during preliminary counseling sessions, telling the workers' supervisors of their complaints and branding them troublemakers.
``This is why people don't go to the EEO office - they practically kick you out,'' Walton said. ``By the time you get back to the shop, the information is already there.''
Hardee says she was taken aback by the attitude of some EEO officials. One EEO investigator told a lawyer, regretfully, that his superiors would not allow him to include particular findings or draw certain conclusions in his report on the workers' complaints.
``The clear implication . . . is there are some findings they don't want put (in the report); there are some conclusions they don't want drawn,'' she said.
The lawyers say they have been told by sympathetic EEO workers that discrimination in Shop 71 is widely recognized and entrenched. An EEO investigator, who years ago was sent to the shop from elsewhere in the yard, likened the experience to ``stepping from Virginia into Mississippi,'' one lawyer said.
But while the lawyers say some EEO workers acknowledge the problems in Shop 71, the office consistently has tried to thwart their efforts, Hardee says.
For example, the EEO office attempted to make the lawyers miss a crucial deadline by refusing to send them copies of documents mailed to their clients and falsifying dates on those documents, she says.
The EEO sent notices to several workers ``confirming'' the dates their final counseling sessions had been held. The lawyers had 15 days from those dates to file formal discrimination complaints, otherwise the process would be voided. However, those counseling sessions never took place, Hardee says, a fact the EEO finally admitted.
``It is fraudulent,'' Hardee said. ``It seems. . . their intent was to create a paper trail so these people would not be able to pursue their claims.''
Contacted by a reporter, EEO officials said that they could not respond to the workers' or lawyers' comments, and that all questions must be directed to the shipyard's public affairs office.
Deputy public affairs officer Henry Luberacki, when told of the black workers' pending discrimination cases, said: ``Well, I'm Polish. Can I join the suit, too?''
That's the kind of attitude they're up against, the workers say.
While it's easy for others to dismiss them as malcontents, the workers say people should try to imagine themselves in their shoes, trying hard to get ahead but unable to budge.
``It makes you feel lifeless,'' Earl Walton said. ``You lose your self-esteem . . . you feel there's no way out.''
The black workers say they no longer expect a fair hearing from the shipyard. Four years ago, after another group of black employees complained of inequal treatment, yard commander Capt. James L. Taylor set up a task force to examine personnel practices.
Among other things, the task force found that a disproportionate share of supervisory positions were held by whites, that white employees received a significantly higher percentage of top performance ratings and that the ``excess labor'' shop was filled mainly with black workers - most sent there as punishment.
After reviewing the findings, Taylor ``required every supervisor and manager to aggressively promote equal opportunity,'' he told Virginia Sen. John Warner in a 1991 letter.
But nothing ever changed, Walton says.
``The power is still under the same regime; the system is intact,'' he said. ``If anything, it's worse.''
{KEYWORDS} DISCRIMINATION LAYOFF REDUCTION IN FORCE UNEMPLOYMENT NORFOLK NAVAL SHIPYARD RACISM SUIT
by CNB