THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602240308
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
A lawyer for three black workers at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard faced a nearly all-white jury Friday and accused the shipyard of giving its dirtiest, most dangerous jobs to blacks.
Attorney Thomas F. Hennessy made the charge on the opening day of a race-discrimination trial in Norfolk's federal court.
Hennessy argued that the shipyard in Portsmouth assigned an unusually high percentage of black workers in Shop 71 - a group of sandblasters and painters - to undesirable jobs on barges and maintaining the shipyard grounds. At the same time, he charged, the shipyard assigned an unusually high percentage of white workers to desirable indoor jobs.
All three plaintiffs are shipyard veterans with 15 to 21 years of experience: Earl Walton, a sandblaster foreman; Carl Phillips, a painter foreman, and Charles Brown, a painter mechanic.
Technically, the trial will affect only these three workers. The outcome, however, will set the stage for about 80 other discrimination claims pending against the shipyard by black employees. Those claims are not yet scheduled for trial.
``This case is not about money,'' Hennessy told the jury. ``This case is about fairness.'' The workers seek unspecified money damages and a ruling that the shipyard engaged in discriminatory behavior that could mean promotions or reassignments.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Leonard, representing the federal installation, denied the charges and said that one of the supervisors accused of bigotry is himself African American.
``There was no discrimination. There was no consideration of race in making job assignments,'' Leonard told the jury.
On Friday, lawyers picked an eight-member jury that includes four white men, three white women and one black man. Then the lawyers made opening statements and argued technical motions. No witnesses testified.
Originally, this was a class-action lawsuit filed by 31 black workers against the shipyard and the employees' union, seeking $58 million in damages. Last year, a judge dismissed seven of the 10 allegations, including those against the union.
Now the case is proceeding with only three plaintiffs. The 80 other employees who have complaints pending may file lawsuits individually or in groups, Hennessy said Friday.
Hennessy told the jury that the shipyard used employee rosters with racial codes to make work assignments.
Sandblasting, he told the jury, is among the dirtiest, most dangerous and least desirable jobs at the yard. In May 1994, when the discrimination allegedly took place, all but one of the sandblasters at Shop 71 - 44 out of 45 - were black, Hennessy said.
The most desirable jobs at Shop 71 were indoors, away from the waterfront, where workers had heat in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer, Hennessy said. Nearly all of those jobs in May 1994 - 11 of 13 - were held by whites, he told the jury.
The hardest and least desirable jobs were on barges, Hennessy said. Seven out of eight of the barge workers were black, he said.
Another undesirable assignment was the Special Projects Work Center, where workers were sent to do yard maintenance - picking up trash, shoveling snow, painting buildings and lines on streets - when there was no ship work. In May 1994, four of the five workers at the center were black, Hennessy said.
But Leonard, the shipyard's attorney, ridiculed the idea that supervisors used racially coded rosters for work assignments, at a shop where everyone knew everyone else.
``The notion that anyone needed a roster of 80 to 100 (employees) to tell them the race of these individuals or anyone else in the shipyard does not make sense,'' Leonard told the jury.
Also, Leonard said, Shop 71 had two supervisors in 1994 and one of them was black. That supervisor made many of the job assignments that are now being called racist, he said.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT DISCRIMINATION TRIAL by CNB