At Work; Battling Sex Bias in a Store Chain
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For the first 13 years Diane Skillsky worked at a Lucky Stores supermarket in Redwood City, Calif., she says there was never a time she did not think about how she could advance through the chain’s intricate jobs flow chart from her position as a checkout clerk. Nor, after the three weeks or so it took her to settle into the job, was there a time she didn’t wonder if advancement had less to do with qualifications and seniority than with friendships, family connections and especially gender. “I watched people with less seniority who knew less than I did move ahead while I was standing in a checkstand day after day,” said Ms. Skillsky, who will observe her 20th anniversary at Lucky’s in a few days. “I asked to be able to do anything, deli, nonfoods, anything. I learned on my own.” Many of the people who passed her on the Lucky’s fast track, waving as they went by, were men. In early 1985, her patience ran out. She filed a sex discrimination complaint at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Two months later, Ms. Skillsky got a promotion the company told her was unrelated to her complaint. Ms. Skillsky was unimpressed: She joined an effort that eventually became a class-action discrimination suit against the Northern California division of the company. Lucky’s 230-store Southern California division is not involved in the suit. The first phase of the case, known as Stender, et al. v. Lucky Stores, ended last August in San Francisco when United States District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel rejected Lucky’s primary defense, that women were sorted into jobs by their preference rather than by managerial design. Among other things, the plaintiffs say they were shunted into peripheral assignments rather than into the “floor” jobs that funnel employees into higher job categories typically held by men. The judge concluded that in placement, promotion, movement to full-time work and allocation of hours, “sex discrimination was the standard operating procedure at Lucky.” The court ruled that Lucky failed to collect accurate information about applicants and apply consistent and public standards to personnel decisions. The result: “ambiguous and subjective” placement, promotion and training practices that led to segregation of the workplace. Because the liability period goes back to 1983 and covers women working in most departments of 188 retail stores in Northern California, Jocelyn Larkin, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, says 20,000 women may be affected by the decision. Lucky’s lawyer, Kirby Wilcox, argues that Ms. Larkin is pushing the envelope of Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act with a “novel legal theory” that creates an artificially extensive network of potential victims. But he acknowledges that Lucky began early in the litigation to modify its personnel policies. Without conceding that it engaged in discrimination, Lucky signed a consent decree that went into effect Oct. 1. “What divides the parties is money,” Mr. Wilcox said. “The company has never resisted changing its practices.” The divide is great. Since mid-September, Judge Patel has been hearing arguments on back pay; Ms. Larkin pegs the damages at $155 million, Mr. Wilcox at $3 million to $6 million. The hearing, according to both sides, is being dominated by dueling statisticians with different formulas for equity. Diane Skillsky says she doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the damages trial. Because the trial involved a class, she has not had to testify as an individual. But the August decision was a relief, she says, if only because she now has a rejoinder to colleagues who refused to take her complaints seriously — even though the E.E.O.C. ruled in her favor in late 1988. “For eight years, I’ve heard, ‘It’s not true,’ ” she said. “Now I have a Federal judge who says it is true. That’s good enough for me.” Later this week, Ms. Skillsky will be honored at a 20th anniversary luncheon. Traditionally, such occasions have included an executive from division headquarters. Is Ms. Skillsky nervous about the impending meeting with her big boss? “He has to hand me the pin,” she said. “I can’t wait.” ‘WOMEN DON’T HAVE THE DRIVE’ More : query.nytimes.com |