147 Women Seek Money From Packer : Labor: A judge may need a year to decide the amount of awards in the discrimination case.

At least 147 women say they were victims of discriminatory hiring practices and deserve to share in an award against a Ventura-based lemon-packing firm.

The claims are part of a class-action lawsuit won last year by a group of former employees of the Saticoy Lemon Assn., said Paul Strauss, an attorney representing the women.

Some women may be eligible for up to $40,000, Strauss said, adding that they could win a total of $1.5 million for back pay and interest.

Individual damages will be based on how much the women would have earned had they been hired when they sought work, Strauss said. He said it will probably take a year for a judge to determine the amount of the awards.

Although the filing deadline was Monday, more claims are expected to arrive by mail this week.

“There were claims filed by people we have not heard about before,” he said. “A lot of times in these cases, you can’t even locate these people.”

U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled in August that Saticoy had violated federal anti-discrimination laws by hiring men for higher-paying positions as general laborers while hiring women for female-dominated positions. He delayed awarding damages at that time.

Saticoy is under court order to cease discriminatory practices, such as refusing to take applications from women for jobs normally filled by men. The company was also ordered to post notice of all job openings and to keep records of all job applicants for at least five years.

Saticoy operates five plants in Ventura, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Oxnard.

George E. Preonas, an attorney representing Saticoy, said the company appealed in February to overturn the judge’s decision. He contended that Saticoy has not discriminated in its hiring policies.

The class-action lawsuit filed in 1987 was brought against Saticoy by women who worked at two Oxnard packinghouses that Saticoy acquired in May, 1986. The packinghouses had been owned by the now-defunct Seaboard Lemon Assn.

After the merger, many female workers employed by Seaboard were laid off at the end of the harvesting season and were never rehired by Saticoy.

Strauss said the women, some of whom had worked as sorters and packers at Seaboard for many years, were passed over while male applicants with little or no experience were hired.

Saticoy officials maintain that there were no job openings when the women applied and that no woman who applied for a job was turned down.

However, Strauss said the women “were turned away before they could apply. They were told they weren’t hiring when, in fact, they were hiring.”

Former workers were eligible to file claims for damages if they were employed at Seaboard between December, 1983, and December, 1985, and were prevented from applying for work at Saticoy from April, 1986, to February, 1987.