August 30, 2004
Taking on the old boys | A Portland author's new book details a groundbreaking sex discrimination case
By Michaela Cavallaro
You'd think Marge Stockford had planned it this way. Just as her book, The Bellwomen: The Story of the Landmark AT&T Sex Discrimination Case, hit the streets last month, gender-based discrimination in the workforce was back in the news. In July, securities firm Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $54 million to current and former female employees to settle claims of sex discrimination. And, more significantly, a federal judge in late June gave class-action status to a massive lawsuit charging Wal-Mart with a pattern of discriminating against women on pay and promotions.
These cases, Stockford says, point out just how important the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's early 1970s case against AT&T was. "The parallels between the [AT&T and Wal-Mart cases] are amazing," says Stockford, a Portland resident who, among other projects, administers the Maine Telecommunications Users Group. "The kind of comments made by the Wal-Mart plaintiffs are like an echo [of the complaints about AT&T], 30 years later."
One plaintiff in the Wal-Mart case, Christine Kwapnoski, told National Public Radio that she continually made less money than male co-workers with less seniority at Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's discount chain. When she'd ask why the men made more, supervisors replied that the men had families to support. And when Kwapnoski asked what she needed to do in order to get promoted, she told NPR, "I was told that I just needed to doll up. And, you know, at that time I worked on a receiving dock, where it was dirty and dusty and hot, and it really wouldn't have done me any good to doll up."
Compare Kwapnoski's experience with that of Peggy Falterman, a young employee of Southern Bell, the AT&T division that served Louisiana. After high school, Falterman became an operator, then a drafting clerk, then a facilities appraisal clerk. But what she really wanted to do was work as a frameman, an outdoor job that required climbing poles to connect telephone circuits ˆ and that paid up to 50% more than she was making at the time. But, according to Stockford's book, when Falterman asked about how she could apply for a frameman's position, "the response was always the same. 'Oh, women don't get those jobs.'"
The difference, of course, is that Falterman's experience occurred in the early 1970s, as part of what Stockford describes as the "monopolistic culture" at AT&T, which rewarded "careful, conservative" managers ˆ white men, almost without exception ˆ who'd spent their careers with the company. The existence of hundreds, if not thousands, of stories like Falterman's led to the case Stockford chronicles in The Bellwomen.
By 1970, female employees of AT&T, which then controlled phone service in the United States, had filed hundreds of complaints with the EEOC, the government agency charged with enforcing the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination against women and minorities. In an attempt both to eliminate some of the EEOC's backlog of cases ˆ complaints, largely filed by black women, against AT&T made up six to seven percent of the agency's caseload ˆ and to draw corporate America's attention to the importance of nondiscriminatory employment practices, a young EEOC lawyer named David Copus suggested that the agency intervene in AT&T's proposed rate case before the Federal Communications Commission. "It was a simple idea," Stockford writes. "Stop Ma Bell from raising its phone rates until the company, in turn, stopped discriminating against its employees.ˆ Not only would it get AT&T's attention quickly because it would hit the company in the pocketbook, but it would also attract the media.ˆ Going after Ma Bell en masse could bring [the many black women who filed complaints], and thousands like them ˆ men and women, blacks and whites ˆ jobs and salaries they had been unjustly denied in the past."
Hippie lawyers vs. staid execs
To construct The Bellwomen, a narrative account of the AT&T case, Stockford spent weeks in the National Archives in College Park, Md., poring over memos, legal documents and transcripts from public hearings on the subject. But the heart of the book comes from the voluminous interviews she conducted with dozens of key players in the case. She began with Bill Brown, then-chairman of the EEOC, and, she says, "followed the trail" from there.
The interviews allow Stockford to combine the factual details of the case with character sketches and physical description; the EEOC's lead lawyer, for example, is described this way: "With a shiny sparkle in his eye, a jeans-and-T-shirt wardrobe, and an abundance of long, dark hair, David Copus looked like he might step out of his EEOC office at any minute, hop on an oversized chopper and join the 'easy riders' Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their trip to Mardi Gras."
Copus, of course, is a stark contrast to the AT&T team that formed to respond to the EEOC's allegations. That culture clash ˆ "young hippie lawyers against the staid executives of AT&T" ˆ is one of the things that drew Stockford to the story. As she researched the book, though, her admiration for top management at AT&T grew. "Some of them certainly were slightly defensive" when interviewed, Stockford says. "But I really felt AT&T was pretty standup about the whole process. They were discriminating ˆ there was no question about it ˆ but once it came to their attention, they were changing their policies, they were realizing, we do have to make these changes and comply with what the government is requiring of us."
It's not giving too much away to reveal that, in the end, the EEOC did prevail. Internal AT&T documents showed that, as Stockford writes, "discrimination can become institutionalized, and this had happened at AT&T. Men were installers and women operators in AT&T's corporate definition. In 1971, there were few pockets of awareness within the Bell system that this was inappropriate, never mind illegal."
Testimony in the case was largely damaging to AT&T, even though the company had begun to improve its employment practices practically as soon as it received notice of the EEOC's case. The company eliminated outmoded practices such as asking female applicants for office jobs their height and weight, and began recruiting women for traditionally male jobs ˆ and recruiting men for traditionally female jobs, something the National Organization for Women, which supported the EEOC's case, felt was extremely important.
Finally, in early 1973, the parties reached a settlement in which AT&T agreed to specific hiring goals for women and minorities in high-paying jobs, as well as goals to hire men for clerical jobs. The company also agreed to pay $15 million in back pay for women and minorities who'd been passed over for promotions, and to allocate $23 million annually for new promotions.
Stockford herself was a beneficiary of the case. In 1978, as a recent college graduate with an engineering degree, she was hired by AT&T Long Lines, the company's long-distance division, through its Management Development Program. "I didn't know anything about the case at the time, but shortly after I was hired, I was sent to an orientation session in Kansas City, Mo.," Stockford says. "They had a personnel person come to one of our sessions and they told us about the consent decree. I remember really thinking, okay, this is how I got this job. I don't remember thinking, oh, I'm not qualified ˆ at the time, in large part because of the AT&T case, I was being heavily recruited for other jobs because I was a female engineer."
The AT&T case, Stockford says, was step one in a long battle to achieve equality between women and men in the workforce, and in society at large. "Certainly there have been steps two, three, four, five ˆ but we haven't gotten to the last step," she says. "And I think [the Morgan Stanley and Wal-Mart] cases show that."
These cases, Stockford says, point out just how important the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's early 1970s case against AT&T was. "The parallels between the [AT&T and Wal-Mart cases] are amazing," says Stockford, a Portland resident who, among other projects, administers the Maine Telecommunications Users Group. "The kind of comments made by the Wal-Mart plaintiffs are like an echo [of the complaints about AT&T], 30 years later."
One plaintiff in the Wal-Mart case, Christine Kwapnoski, told National Public Radio that she continually made less money than male co-workers with less seniority at Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's discount chain. When she'd ask why the men made more, supervisors replied that the men had families to support. And when Kwapnoski asked what she needed to do in order to get promoted, she told NPR, "I was told that I just needed to doll up. And, you know, at that time I worked on a receiving dock, where it was dirty and dusty and hot, and it really wouldn't have done me any good to doll up."
Compare Kwapnoski's experience with that of Peggy Falterman, a young employee of Southern Bell, the AT&T division that served Louisiana. After high school, Falterman became an operator, then a drafting clerk, then a facilities appraisal clerk. But what she really wanted to do was work as a frameman, an outdoor job that required climbing poles to connect telephone circuits ˆ and that paid up to 50% more than she was making at the time. But, according to Stockford's book, when Falterman asked about how she could apply for a frameman's position, "the response was always the same. 'Oh, women don't get those jobs.'"
The difference, of course, is that Falterman's experience occurred in the early 1970s, as part of what Stockford describes as the "monopolistic culture" at AT&T, which rewarded "careful, conservative" managers ˆ white men, almost without exception ˆ who'd spent their careers with the company. The existence of hundreds, if not thousands, of stories like Falterman's led to the case Stockford chronicles in The Bellwomen.
By 1970, female employees of AT&T, which then controlled phone service in the United States, had filed hundreds of complaints with the EEOC, the government agency charged with enforcing the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination against women and minorities. In an attempt both to eliminate some of the EEOC's backlog of cases ˆ complaints, largely filed by black women, against AT&T made up six to seven percent of the agency's caseload ˆ and to draw corporate America's attention to the importance of nondiscriminatory employment practices, a young EEOC lawyer named David Copus suggested that the agency intervene in AT&T's proposed rate case before the Federal Communications Commission. "It was a simple idea," Stockford writes. "Stop Ma Bell from raising its phone rates until the company, in turn, stopped discriminating against its employees.ˆ Not only would it get AT&T's attention quickly because it would hit the company in the pocketbook, but it would also attract the media.ˆ Going after Ma Bell en masse could bring [the many black women who filed complaints], and thousands like them ˆ men and women, blacks and whites ˆ jobs and salaries they had been unjustly denied in the past."
Hippie lawyers vs. staid execs
To construct The Bellwomen, a narrative account of the AT&T case, Stockford spent weeks in the National Archives in College Park, Md., poring over memos, legal documents and transcripts from public hearings on the subject. But the heart of the book comes from the voluminous interviews she conducted with dozens of key players in the case. She began with Bill Brown, then-chairman of the EEOC, and, she says, "followed the trail" from there.
The interviews allow Stockford to combine the factual details of the case with character sketches and physical description; the EEOC's lead lawyer, for example, is described this way: "With a shiny sparkle in his eye, a jeans-and-T-shirt wardrobe, and an abundance of long, dark hair, David Copus looked like he might step out of his EEOC office at any minute, hop on an oversized chopper and join the 'easy riders' Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their trip to Mardi Gras."
Copus, of course, is a stark contrast to the AT&T team that formed to respond to the EEOC's allegations. That culture clash ˆ "young hippie lawyers against the staid executives of AT&T" ˆ is one of the things that drew Stockford to the story. As she researched the book, though, her admiration for top management at AT&T grew. "Some of them certainly were slightly defensive" when interviewed, Stockford says. "But I really felt AT&T was pretty standup about the whole process. They were discriminating ˆ there was no question about it ˆ but once it came to their attention, they were changing their policies, they were realizing, we do have to make these changes and comply with what the government is requiring of us."
It's not giving too much away to reveal that, in the end, the EEOC did prevail. Internal AT&T documents showed that, as Stockford writes, "discrimination can become institutionalized, and this had happened at AT&T. Men were installers and women operators in AT&T's corporate definition. In 1971, there were few pockets of awareness within the Bell system that this was inappropriate, never mind illegal."
Testimony in the case was largely damaging to AT&T, even though the company had begun to improve its employment practices practically as soon as it received notice of the EEOC's case. The company eliminated outmoded practices such as asking female applicants for office jobs their height and weight, and began recruiting women for traditionally male jobs ˆ and recruiting men for traditionally female jobs, something the National Organization for Women, which supported the EEOC's case, felt was extremely important.
Finally, in early 1973, the parties reached a settlement in which AT&T agreed to specific hiring goals for women and minorities in high-paying jobs, as well as goals to hire men for clerical jobs. The company also agreed to pay $15 million in back pay for women and minorities who'd been passed over for promotions, and to allocate $23 million annually for new promotions.
Stockford herself was a beneficiary of the case. In 1978, as a recent college graduate with an engineering degree, she was hired by AT&T Long Lines, the company's long-distance division, through its Management Development Program. "I didn't know anything about the case at the time, but shortly after I was hired, I was sent to an orientation session in Kansas City, Mo.," Stockford says. "They had a personnel person come to one of our sessions and they told us about the consent decree. I remember really thinking, okay, this is how I got this job. I don't remember thinking, oh, I'm not qualified ˆ at the time, in large part because of the AT&T case, I was being heavily recruited for other jobs because I was a female engineer."
The AT&T case, Stockford says, was step one in a long battle to achieve equality between women and men in the workforce, and in society at large. "Certainly there have been steps two, three, four, five ˆ but we haven't gotten to the last step," she says. "And I think [the Morgan Stanley and Wal-Mart] cases show that."
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