Young v. EDGCOMB STEEL COMPANY

363 F. Supp. 961, 1973 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12007, 6 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 8916, 6 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 474
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. North Carolina
DecidedSeptember 7, 1973
Docket1:06-m-00089
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 363 F. Supp. 961 (Young v. EDGCOMB STEEL COMPANY) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Young v. EDGCOMB STEEL COMPANY, 363 F. Supp. 961, 1973 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12007, 6 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 8916, 6 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 474 (M.D.N.C. 1973).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

GORDON, Chief Judge.

Johnie Young, the plaintiff, a forty-three year old Negro, filed a charge of racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on March 13, 1969, alleging that his employer, Edgcomb Steel Company, the defendant, had denied him advancement on account of his race. Young’s charge was investigated by the EEOC, but no decision was rendered. On or about November 23, 1970, the plaintiff received a letter dated November 20, 1970, from the EEOC advising him of his right to institute a civil action in a United States District Court within thirty days of receipt of the letter. On December 10, 1970, within the allotted thirty days, the plaintiff instituted this individual and class action under § 2000e et seq. and § 1981 of Title 42, United States Code. After extensive discovery the case was tried by the Court without a jury on February 26 and 27 and March 8, 1973.

The defendant is a corporation licensed to do business and doing business in North Carolina. Its main office is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and there are plants in Pennsylvania, New York,’ South Carolina and North Carolina. The Greensboro, North Carolina, plant, which is involved in this suit, is a metal processing center. It receives semi-finished steel and aluminum and processes it into sheets, bars, coils, and tubing for industrial use.

There are currently three divisions in the Greensboro plant: (1) Outside Sales, (2) Office and Inside Sales, and (3) Warehouse. Richard A. Deal is Sales Manager in charge of Outside Sales; Herbert R. McCorkle, Jr., is Office Manager and Paul Dwyer is Plant' Superintendent. Peter B. Kline is Vice-President and General Manager of the Greensboro plant. The Outside Sales Division includes the sales manager and outside salesmen. The outside salesmen travel the geographical area served by the Greensboro plant, meet customers in person, sell the Company’s products, and make new contacts for future sales. The Office and Inside Sales Division includes the office manager, who runs the division; the credit manager; inside salesmen, who deal with customers by telephone and by letters relative to inquiries and orders and maintain proper inventory through periodic mill purchases; clerical personnel; order writers; secretaries; and telephone operators. The Warehouse Division includes the plant supervisor; traffic manager; foremen; maintenance operator; orderman, who assembles metal from plant inventory pursuant to customers’ orders; operator, who operates equipment in the plant; helper, who assists the operator; truck driver; receiving inspector; truck loader;- truck washer; coil handler and starters, who are learning a job.

The two major job categories within the warehouse are operator and order-man. The operator runs an assigned *964 piece of equipment, including shearers, saws, slitters, levelers, edgers, and cranes, and actually processes the metal. The operator’s job requires a certain amount of skill unique to the piece of equipment being used. The orderman takes a customer’s order from the foreman and processes the order for shipment by taking the metal out of its rack, putting a strap around it, and tagging it. Ordermen also unload incoming trucks.

Inside salesmen at Edgcomb Steel’s Greensboro operation service a geographical area of North Carolina north of the Yadkin River and all of Virginia except for the area adjacent to Washington, D.C. While outside salesmen travel around the area making personal contacts with potential or current customers, inside salesmen operate from the Greensboro office by letter and telephone. Inside salesmen follow up the contacts made by outside salesmen by telephone, and service all customer accounts. Each inside salesman specializes in a particular company product, for example, aluminum sheets, or cold finished bars, but also handles inquiries about other products when necessary. Inside salesmen keep track of how much is bought and sold in a given period and estimate how much may be needed in the future. The job requirements for inside sales include a knowledge of basic math, and the ability to communicate with people on the telephone, to make written reports, to handle paper work, to work under pressure, and to come to a logical conclusion given certain facts.

Within the warehouse all employees except foremen are paid hourly wages. The amount of any one employee’s wages is governed by the type of job he holds and the length of his term of employment. Hourly wages range from $2.25 per hour to $4.35 per hour. In addition to regular pay, the plant’s hourly-paid workers often work overtime, for which they are paid one and one-half times their standard hourly wage. Foremen are salaried employees. Their salaries range from $850.00 to $1,000.00 per month. These salaries are greater than the regular pay, without overtime, of every hourly-paid employee and, in the vast majority of cases, are greater than the pay of such wage-earners even when overtime is taken into account.

As of January 20, 1972, every inside salesman was making from $600.00 to $925.00 per month. In addition to their salaries, inside salesmen are paid sizable bonuses each year, the amount of such bonuses depending in part on the performance of each individual salesman. While the starting salary of an inside salesman is not as great as the hourly wages of some warehouse employees, there is an opportunity for advancement in salary to an amount greater than that received by any wage earner.

On July 2, 1965, the date the 1964 Civil Rights Act (including now codified § 2000e et seq.) became effective, and on September 8, 1971, the date of plaintiff’s interrogatories, the following racial distribution of personnel existed at defendant’s Greensboro Plant:

July 2,1965 Sept, 8,1971
Job Black While Black White
Outside Sales 4 — 6
Inside Sales 9 — 11
Clerical 10 — 6
Order Writer 3' — 4
Secretary 2 — 2
Stenographer
Telephone
Operator 1 — 1
Maintenance
Operator 1 — 1
Receiving
Inspector
Traffic Manager 1 — 1 .
Starter Helper
Foreman — 3 14
Orderman 6 3 3 5
Operator 3 4 9 6
Helper 4 6 1*4
and 1 *
Truck Driver 7 — 8 —
Truck Loader 2 — 2 —
Truck Washer 1
Coll Bander — — 2 1
* On Military Leave

At the date of the trial herein, the defendant had hired two black inside salesmen and two black office workers for the Credit Department. Before these hirings, there had never been a black *965

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
363 F. Supp. 961, 1973 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12007, 6 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 8916, 6 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 474, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/young-v-edgcomb-steel-company-ncmd-1973.