4 Black RTD Supervisors File Suit Charging Rigged Promotion Tests

Four black operations supervisors who said they were passed over for promotion and criticized by superiors for commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday filed a class-action suit Friday alleging that the Southern California Rapid Transit District routinely discriminates against minority employees.

The men said in their Superior Court lawsuit that they were among 43 blacks who were told that they failed tests for promotion to nine newly created supervisory positions, then were denied access to test results after white employees were named to all nine jobs.

The lawsuit, which seeks $100 million in punitive damages against the transit district, claims that minority employees were subjected to an atmosphere of “deep racial hostilities” and threatened with reprisals when they complained about the district’s promotional practices.

In one case, operations supervisor Wilbert Ivory said, he was “verbally attacked” by his supervisor for wearing a button celebrating the birthday of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and told it “equated . . . to wearing a Ku Klux Klan uniform.”

Ivory, a 10-year employee of the district, and co-plaintiffs Clarence M. Adams, Willem F. Siedenburg and Samuel Wolf also complained in the lawsuit of a poem entitled “20,000 Niggers in Heaven” allegedly circulated in their work area by a transit district management official.

In the poem, attached to and submitted with the lawsuit, the angel Gabriel complains that blacks “have torn down the pearly gates swinging on them, they stole my horn, got barbecue sauce all over their robes, ham-hock bones, spare-rib bones and pig-feet bones all over the streets of gold.”

‘The Wrong Approach’

It goes on: “The Lord said . . . maybe we are using the wrong approach. We need to check with someone who has more experience dealing with them. Let’s call the devil.”

District officials, who point to a successful affirmative-action program and the presence of blacks in at least two key managerial positions, said they could not comment further until they had reviewed the suit.

“I will certainly personally look into these allegations, and if found not to be allegations but to be true, the appropriate steps will be taken, I can assure you of that,” said Walter Norwood, assistant general manager for equal opportunity.

The primary issue in the class-action suit is a job announcement in December, 1985, for nine newly created senior transit operations supervisor positions. Only transit operations supervisors were allowed to take the written test for the new job, in which successful applicants would supervise units of five of their former peers.

According to the lawsuit, 43 blacks and 14 whites applied for the jobs. Six of the black applicants had college degrees, and two of them had master’s degrees. Yet only two blacks passed the written test, which in part asked applicants to describe how they would improve morale in the department. Both blacks failed to pass the oral interview, the suit said.

Ivory said blacks were outraged when one of those promoted was a man who had been investigated over allegations of racial prejudice. The suit said RTD officials had found the allegations “true and well-founded.”

‘Rigged Test Results’

Black employees protested the man’s promotion and demanded copies of the exams of white employees who had passed but were refused copies of the test answers, the suit said. It alleges that RTD officials “rigged the test results so that all of the black applicants and other minorities would be eliminated as candidates for promotion.”

After a storm of complaints, RTD officials canceled the new positions and administered the written test again, after which three of the nine positions went to blacks, Ivory said.

Norwood said the fact that the job was re-advertised and retested means that the district’s affirmative-action policy is working.

“We recognized that ethnic and sex distribution was not there as to the people that made the (original) list,” he said. “We questioned that, and as a result, the test was thrown out and we started over again.”

Eventually, 40% of those hired for the new positions were women or members of minorities, he added.