Ruling Threatens Boeing Settlement

SEATTLE — A federal judge agreed Wednesday to hear allegations by disgruntled Boeing employees that will postpone--and potentially undermine--a $15-million discrimination settlement between the aerospace giant and its African American employees.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that an attorney representing the dissenting workers could depose key parties in the settlement, including Boeing Chief Executive Phil Condit or his representative, to resolve a number of issues including whether Boeing improperly paid the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s organization $50,000 for his help in settling the suit.

Alan B. Epstein, whose seven clients at Boeing’s Philadelphia helicopter plant became part of the broader settlement, said he represented hundreds of Boeing employees who were dissatisfied with the settlement because it failed to do enough to ensure African Americans equal access to management positions and because it offered too little money in compensation for past discrimination.

Epstein said Boeing donated $50,000 to Jackson’s Wall Street Project soon after his role in the settlement. He also alleged that the company appears to have steered pension fund business to two black-owned businesses with ties to Jackson.

Boeing spokesman Peter Conte said the $50,000 donation to the Wall Street Project was committed in December, before Jackson was involved in settlement talks. And Conte said any decisions about pension fund management are made independently of any issues involved in the settlement.

The consent decree, signed in January, provides for up to $50,000 each for a group of 300 employees who were either named plaintiffs or otherwise had specific claims. The rest of the 15,000 or so African American plaintiffs typically received a few hundred dollars each.

Oscar Desper III, the attorney who brought the first discrimination case against Boeing in March 1998 and ultimately negotiated the settlement, said Epstein was acting as the “spoiler” because he will only receive $200,000 in legal fees under the settlement instead of the $792,000 he initially requested. Desper’s firm stands to earn $3.85 million in legal fees as part of the settlement.

In response, Epstein denied that legal fees were a motivation for his challenge to the settlement.

In one of the more inflammatory charges, Epstein alleges in documents submitted to the court that Mary Dean, a leader of a group of Boeing employees in Wichita, Kan., had opposed the settlement until she was invited to Seattle to meet with Condit and Jackson.

Epstein said that subsequently, Dean’s son and husband who had each worked only briefly for Boeing, were each granted $13,000 as part of the settlement.

Fred Roseborough, a plant worker at Boeing’s Wichita plant who said he was given a noose by a supervisor and told to wear it, in contrast, received $20,000, an amount he told the court he considers “dehumanizing.”