Lemon Firm Accused of Giving Best Jobs to Men : Lawsuits: The packinghouse association says it encouraged female workers to seek promotions. A four-year legal battle nears the end.
One of Ventura County’s largest lemon-packing associations was accused Friday of reserving high-paid jobs for men by an attorney suing the packinghouse on behalf of a group of former female employees.
Despite years of seniority, female employees at the Saticoy Lemon Assn. were relegated to lower-paid jobs while men were promoted, said Paul Strauss, an attorney representing about 100 women in a class-action lawsuit against the company. Women holding those jobs were also more likely to be laid off when the picking season ended, he added.
The bitter 4-year-old legal dispute between the packinghouse and the group neared an end as lawyers for both sides presented closing arguments in Los Angeles Friday before U.S. District Court Judge John G. Davies. A decision is not expected for several weeks.
The dispute has hinged on whether the Saticoy Lemon Assn., a group that runs packinghouses in five Ventura County cities, is responsible for the hiring policies of the Seaboard Lemon Assn., a company it acquired four years ago during a merger.
Attorneys representing the Saticoy Lemon Assn. contend that the federal lawsuit was filed after the May, 1986, merger and therefore does not apply to the new company.
During that merger, Seaboard’s two packinghouses in Oxnard became part of a network of packinghouses Saticoy already owned. The lawsuit, however, contends that Seaboard’s policies regarding female workers continued after the acquisition.
George Preonas, an attorney defending Saticoy, maintains that the company never violated those laws and has in fact encouraged women to apply for all jobs it posts.
The suit filed by the women contends that the company violated and continues to violate federal anti-discrimination laws and seeks a court order barring the Saticoy Lemon Assn. from further alleged discriminatory practices.
It also seeks compensation for the plaintiffs, including back pay and promotions the female workers would have received had they not been subjected to the alleged discrimination.
A key study used in the case against Saticoy indicated that women with two to 15 years of experience received substantially less pay than men with the same level of experience at the packinghouse, Strauss said.
Women workers received on the average gross annual wages of $5,646 a year, compared with average gross annual wages of $15,189 for men, according to the study.
The disparity existed because the jobs women held as sorters, packers and washers were not as highly paid as jobs held by men, Strauss said. The men worked as supervisors, shipping clerks, mechanics and lift operators, he said.
Preonas, in an interview outside the courtroom, said those comparisons are inaccurate. The study tries to compare men and women at different job classifications working at different times of the year, he said. Many of the jobs at the packinghouses are seasonal.
Moreover, Saticoy’s wages have been assigned according to job skill, not sex, Preonas said. Most of the people who have been allowed to work as general laborers, for example, are men because it requires heavy labor. Saticoy managers “gave women workers jobs they could succeed at,” Preonas said in court arguments.
Preonas said Saticoy has encouraged women to seek jobs dominated by men, but they have declined to apply. “No woman was ever denied the opportunity to submit an application on a day when men were submitting applications,” he said.
The Saticoy Lemon Assn. runs lemon packinghouses in Santa Paula, Oxnard, Montalvo, Ventura and Saticoy, but the class-action lawsuit only covers an estimated 100 women who worked at two packinghouses in Oxnard before the merger.
Attorneys representing the female employees contend that Saticoy’s practices went further than hiring women only for certain jobs.
Strauss said that shortly after the merger with Seaboard, the newly formed Saticoy Lemon Assn. refused to accept applications from the former Seaboard employees because they were reserved for men.
Sofia Gonzalez of Oxnard, one of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, initially filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
Between 1975 and 1985, Gonzalez said in the complaint, she worked as a packer and sorter and was never promoted. Gonzalez was laid off just before the merger of Saticoy and Seaboard. But when she later sought a job with the new company, Gonzalez was not hired while men with less or no experience were hired ahead of her, the complaint said.
Two former Seaboard employees who attended the court proceedings Friday also complained of being passed over when they tried to apply at Saticoy after the merger.
In an interview outside the courtroom, Leticia Ortiz, 28, of Oxnard said she earned about $4,000 a year working as a packer and sorter at Seaboard. Ortiz said she applied repeatedly for jobs such as mechanic and general laborer, but was always told those jobs were reserved for men. She was never called back, she said.
“I wanted to apply for a mechanic’s job, but they never gave us the opportunity,” said Ortiz, who worked six years for Seaboard before she was laid off in 1984. “They gave them to the men, but to the women, no.”
