Limited Promotional Opportunities Discriminatory

A Pine Bluff, Arkansas facility of the General Waterworks Corporation was sued by black employees alleging discrimination. According to an appellate court, evidence that black employees were heavily concentrated in construction and maintenance (C&M) and that except for one clerk and one janitor, there was only one black employee in any of the nonsupervisory job classifications outside of C&M was sufficient for inference of discrimination in promotions and hiring for these classifications. The court emphasized that maintenance of a largely segregated work force by an all white supervisory staff that ignored or discouraged the efforts of black employees to seek promotions into all white or predominately white classifications was a violation of Title VII.