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Trial starts in workers' claims of Boeing bias

By Shirleen Holt
Seattle Times business reporter

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The suit alleges that about 1,800 engineers and technical employees, categorized in Boeing salary studies as Asian American, were paid less than white workers for doing the same jobs.

The seven named plaintiffs represent a range of ethnicities, including Iranian, Afghan and Filipino, as well as Cambodian and Vietnamese.

In arguing for the plaintiffs, attorney Martin Garfinkel raised some of the same points made in a gender-discrimination suit Boeing partially settled Friday. He told the jury the company's loose criteria for deciding pay grades allowed managers' biases to favor white employees. The plaintiffs plan to use Boeing's own salary studies as well as figures from paid experts to bolster their case.

"They (Boeing executives) knew this unguided system was a problem," Garfinkel told jurors.

Attorney Jeffrey Hollingsworth laid out Boeing's defense, which aims to refute the studies by arguing that vast differences within job types makes salary comparisons unreliable.

Boeing conducted internal pay studies in the late 1990s after government audits found evidence of wage discrimination at various company sites.

The company's studies found women and minorities were often paid less than white men doing the same job, and that managers' subjectivity and lax monitoring for equal-employment matters contributed to the disparities.

Hollingsworth also will take aim at the unusual class of plaintiffs, which labels workers of Iranian and Afghan descent as Asian American. He told jurors that Boeing did not discriminate against any of the groups bringing the suit, either as an ethnic class or as a collective. "The pattern does not exist," he said.

The trial began just days after Boeing settled the financial portion of a gender-bias class-action case involving 28,000 women in the Puget Sound area. Negotiations in that case continued up to the eve of the trial, which was to have begun yesterday. Neither side has disclosed details of the settlement, and certain nonfinancial issues remain to be negotiated.

Boeing has opted to fight the race-bias case, which is being heard in Judge Robert Lasnik's courtroom.
 
"We dispute these allegations," company spokesman Ken Mercer said yesterday. "It does not reflect how we do business. I believe the facts will prove that the company operates in an environment of equality and fairness."

The plaintiffs are expected to paint a different portrait, one of a workplace hostile to minorities.

Khalil Nouri, who came to the United States from Afghanistan in 1974, said he was the victim of racial slurs while working in the 777 tool-engineering division in the mid-1990s. In a deposition, he said one co-worker called him a "towel head." Another said, "Middle Easterners don't brush their teeth."

Nouri said he complained to Boeing's equal-employment opportunity office, an internal watchdog agency, and received a formal apology, but that he was unaware of any disciplinary action taken against the co-workers.

Nouri said he received a lower retention rating than his co-workers despite having more seniority and skills. He was laid off in 1999.

The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages and back pay. The suit spans 1991 to 2000 for engineers in the class, and from 1991 to the present for technical workers.