Seo v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

749 F. Supp. 1173, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14918, 54 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 669, 1990 WL 172589
CourtDistrict Court, D. New Hampshire
DecidedAugust 15, 1990
DocketNo. C 88-61-S
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 749 F. Supp. 1173 (Seo v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. New Hampshire primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Seo v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 749 F. Supp. 1173, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14918, 54 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 669, 1990 WL 172589 (D.N.H. 1990).

Opinion

OPINION

STAHL, District Judge.

This is an action arising under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. (“Title VII”).1

1. Factual Background

Daeshik Seo, a Korean, came to this country in 1976 with a wife and four children. In Korea, Mr. Seo earned a master’s degree, and had been, among other things, a teacher of biology and art, a boxing champion, one of three world grand masters in the art of Tae Kwon Do, and a sports trainer.

Arriving in the United States and speaking no English, Seo came to New Hampshire, where he took employment of an industrial nature in order to support his family. Mr. Seo held several jobs before May 2, 1980 when he became a probationary employee at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Anheuser-Busch is a corporation operating in Merrimack, New Hampshire, engaged in brewing, packaging and shipping beer — an activity affecting interstate commerce. There are more than 2000 employees at the brewery which operates three shifts a day.

Under the system in existence at the Merrimack brewery, an employee is initially hired as a probationary employee. After a three-month probationary period, an employee becomes what is known at the plant as a casual employee. A casual employee becomes a regular employee after the completion of 179 days of full-time employment during any calendar year. Seo attained that level of employment in 1983, when he automatically became a regular employee. [1175]*1175Although probationary employees are evaluated, transition to regular employee status is solely a function of meeting the time requirement.

Mr. Seo is the sole employee, at the An-heuser-Busch Merrimack facility, who is of the oriental race and of Korean national origin. He works the first shift, the so-called midnight shift. This shift starts for some employees between 10:00 p.m. and 10:45 p.m. and for others at midnight. Early shift employees are largely involved in preparation, cleaning and setup work for the bottling and canning lines with actual production work on the fillers and labelers beginning around midnight. Shift status is based on one’s seniority number.

The Anheuser-Busch plant is unionized and Seo’s employment at the brewery has been governed by a collective bargaining agreement between Anheuser-Busch and Teamsters Union Local 633 and the Brewery and Soft Drink Workers’ Conference U.S.A. and Canada. Seo is a member of Teamsters Union Local 633 and all production classification employees currently earn $17.55 per hour regardless of the tasks assigned.

The Anheuser-Busch plant in Merrimack is generally divided into three departments: brewing, laboratory, and beer packaging and shipping. For almost his entire period of employment, Mr. Seo has been assigned to the Beer Packaging and Shipping Department. That department, as the name suggests, is where the beer is bottled, kegged, and canned and then shipped from the brewery to distributors. Within the department there is a packaging side and a shipping side and on a regular shift, the department may have between 30 and 60 employees assigned to it on a weekly basis. The packaging side contains much of the bottling and canning machinery divided into what are known as lines. The various lines use different types of machinery and typically different operators depending on whether it is a can or a bottle line.

On the shipping side, which is comprised of a large warehouse and loading areas, empty packaging materials such as cans, bottles, and boxes are stored or moved on to the beginning of the production lines. There is also a keg line on the shipping side. Filled bottles and cans, after having been boxed and loaded onto pallets, are removed from the end of conveyer lines and either stored in the warehouse or directly loaded for shipment out of the plant.

It is undisputed that Seo, throughout much of his career at the brewery, has performed a variety of jobs, including cleaning, bottle standup, carton salvage, carton balance, foam pick, soaker in-feed, warehouse utility/repack, pasteurizer discharge, bail or carton makeup, and palletizer take-away. Palletizer take-away requires that the employee operate a fork lift truck and Seo has handled that job with some degree of regularity since he acquired his fork lift license in February 1985. Several of the other jobs which Seo does on a regular basis also have a machinery component and each of them requires understanding and training in the job function.

The Court, prior to the commencement of the taking of evidence, took a view of the premises. The portion of the Beer Packaging and Shipping Department, where most of the bottling and canning of beverages occurs, is extremely noisy. All employees wear ear and eye protection, and without ear protection it was necessary to concentrate in order to hear even those people standing close by who were attempting to explain the various machinery functions. Much of the machinery worked at an extraordinarily fast pace producing beverages at an astonishing speed.

The company has no general policy of training within Beer Packaging and Shipping. Training is accomplished according to the company’s operational needs and what are perceived to be the strengths and talents of the employees. Although some of the employees believe that the company should cross-train all employees on all pieces of equipment in the packaging department, this has not been the company policy and employees are not routinely trained on all of the equipment, although those who have obtained supervisory posi[1176]*1176tions in the department usually have been trained on most of the equipment.

Job assignment of production classification employees is generally the responsibility and within the discretion of shift superintendents. To a lesser degree, supervisors may have the responsibility for job assignments and decisions about which hourly employee is to do what job within the department. Job assignment determinations are made on a weekly basis, prior to the beginning of the first shift of each new week, by the shift superintendents after initially determining what hourly employees are scheduled for work during a given week.

On a daily basis, depending on production requirements and taking into account absenteeism or other production considerations, employees may be assigned by a shift superintendent or supervisor to do different or additional jobs than those to which they were initially assigned. The brewery at Merrimack is considered a food production facility and, as such, cleaning and inspection jobs are important job assignments in the plant done on a daily and weekly basis. There are approximately thirty separate functions within Beer Packaging and Shipping and the plaintiff is fully qualified to perform at least ten of those jobs.

2. The Title VII Claim

After eight days of hearing, it is evident that the basic Title VII claim asserted by the plaintiff is that he was denied the consistent training which would have enabled him to work on what he views as more sophisticated machinery within the Beer Packaging and Shipping Department and that if he had been so trained it might have been possible for him to move into a supervisory position.

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749 F. Supp. 1173, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14918, 54 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 669, 1990 WL 172589, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/seo-v-anheuser-busch-inc-nhd-1990.