United Steelworkers of America v. Weber

443 U.S. 193 (1979), argued 28 Mar. 1979, decided 27 June 1979 by vote of 5 to 2; Brennan for the Court, Burger and Rehnquist in dissent, Powell and Stevens not participating. Despite earlier opportunities, Weber was the first case in which the Supreme Court specifically addressed affirmative action in employment.

The master collective bargaining agreement for the Kaiser Aluminum Company had been adapted from a settlement of employment discrimination claims in the steel industry. Craft hiring goals for blacks were set at each Kaiser plant equal to the percentage of blacks in the respective local labor forces. On the job training programs were established for unskilled production workers, both black and white. Admission to the programs was based on seniority, with 50 percent of the openings in these newly created in‐plant training jobs available for whites.

Weber, an unskilled white employee at the Kaiser plant in Gramercy, Louisiana, had more service than some of the black employees selected for the program but less than any of the successful white applicants. He sued the company and the union, alleging that the program's racial classification for admission violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Acknowledging that Weber's literal interpretation of the act was not without force, Justice William J. Brennan, for the majority, emphasized the significance of the fact that the program was voluntarily adopted by private parties to eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation. He noted that judicial findings of exclusion from crafts on racial grounds are so numerous as to make such exclusion a proper subject for judicial notice.

The court rejected Weber's argument that Title VII specifically prohibited any grant of preferential treatment to racial minorities. It held that Title VII's prohibitions against racial discrimination do not condemn all private, voluntary, race‐conscious affirmative action plans.

The Court declined to define in detail the line of demarcation between permissible and impermissible affirmative action plans. But this plan did not unnecessarily trammel the interests of white employees, did not require the discharge of whites to make room for blacks, and did not permanently bar the advancement of white employees. The plan was temporary, and it was not intended to maintain racial balance but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance. Therefore, it fell within the area of discretion left by Title VII to the private sector voluntarily to adopt affirmative action plans designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories.

See also Employment Discrimination; Labor; Race and Racism.

— James E. Jones, Jr.

• 443 U.S. 193 (1979)
• Vote: 5–2
• For the Court: Brennan
• Dissenting: Burger and Rehnquist
• Not participating: Powell and Stevens

The United Steelworkers of America, a labor union, made an agreement with the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company to set up a training program to develop the skills of workers at a Kaiser plant in Gramercy, Louisiana. Half of the places in the program were reserved for black workers. In the past, black workers in this region had been denied opportunities to become highly skilled craftworkers, and most of them worked at low-paying, menial jobs. The company's voluntary and temporary plan was designed to overcome past job discrimination and to create new opportunities for black workers.

Brian Weber, a white unskilled worker and a member of the union, applied for a position in the new job training program. He was rejected. However, black workers with less seniority than Weber were selected in order to fill the 50 percent quota reserved for black workers in the new training program.

Seniority refers to the amount of time a worker has been employed in a job. Labor unions often use seniority as a standard for distributing benefits of one kind or another; those with more years of service get preference in promotions to better jobs or positions in job training programs.

Weber charged that his rejection for admission to the job training program was unfair because it was based on race, not the usual standard of seniority. He claimed this was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids an employer to discriminate against an employee ‘because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Weber sued the union and his employer.

The Issue

Was the plan for selecting applicants to the job training program, set up by the United Steelworkers of America in agreement with the Kaiser plant, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Was Brian Weber illegally denied admission to the new job training program at the Kaiser plant in Gramercy, Louisiana?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court held that the plan for selecting applicants to the job training program did not violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Justice William Brennan wrote that the plan for selecting applicants was in line with the intent of the Civil Rights Act to “break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy.”

Brennan emphasized that the race based quota in the plan was temporary and resulted from a voluntary agreement between a labor union and an employer. Further, he said, the purpose was not to maintain a racial balance but to overcome a long-standing racial imbalance in employment opportunity.

Dissent

Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist argued that the plan for admission to the job training program conflicted with the words and the intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. According to the dissenters, the federal law clearly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in selecting participants for a job training program.

Significance

This was the first case in which the Court decided an issue about an employer's affirmative action plan—a program that gives favored treatment to members of certain groups supposed to have suffered from past discrimination in employment opportunities. The decision encouraged private employers to experiment with temporary and voluntary affirmative action plans.

See also Affirmative action