EEOC v. Pipefitters 597 ( 2003 )


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  •                             In the
    United States Court of Appeals
    For the Seventh Circuit
    ____________
    No. 02-2057
    EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION,
    Plaintiff-Appellee,
    and
    JAMES M. FERGUSON,
    Intervening Plaintiff-Appellee,
    v.
    PIPEFITTERS ASSOCIATION LOCAL UNION 597,
    Defendant-Appellant.
    ____________
    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
    Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
    Nos. 98 C 1601, 98 C 3217—David H. Coar, Judge.
    ____________
    ARGUED FEBRUARY 28, 2003—DECIDED JULY 1, 2003
    ____________
    Before POSNER, MANION, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.
    POSNER, Circuit Judge. The EEOC brought suit against
    Foster Wheeler Constructors, the prime contractor on a
    project to construct a recycling plant in Robbins, Illinois,
    and a local of the pipefitters union that supplied workers
    to Foster Wheeler. The suit, based on Title VII and also on
    
    42 U.S.C. § 1981
    —but the standards are the same under the
    2                                                 No. 02-2057
    two statutes, at least so far as bears on this case, Bennett v.
    Roberts, 
    295 F.3d 687
    , 697-98 (7th Cir. 2002); Patton v.
    Indianapolis Public School Board, 
    276 F.3d 334
    , 337-38 (7th Cir.
    2002); Thompson v. Potomac Electric Power Co., 
    312 F.3d 645
    ,
    649 n. 1 (4th Cir. 2002)—sought to affix liability to the
    defendants for the harassment of black pipefitters by their
    white coworkers. One of the eight pipefitters on whose
    behalf the EEOC had sued, James Ferguson, intervened in
    the suit as a plaintiff, as he was entitled to do, 42 U.S.C.
    § 2000e-5(f)(1), seeking higher damages than those sought
    on his behalf by the Commission. Foster Wheeler settled,
    but the case against the union proceeded to a bench trial,
    which the plaintiffs won. The judge awarded compensatory
    damages to the EEOC on behalf of the eight black workers
    totaling $105,000, punitive damages of $50,000, and an
    injunction against the union’s “permitting a hostile work
    environment based on race to exist for its members at any
    job site.” The union appeals.
    The harassment consisted primarily of graffiti scrawled on
    the interior walls of portable toilets at the construction
    site—slogans such as “death to all niggers,” “your grand-
    mother is such a slut she even fucks niggers,” “Fergie
    [plaintiff James Ferguson], if you don’t want to be treated
    like a nigger, don’t act like one,” “The shines are ruining
    this country,” and “Fuck Niggers.” Additional acts of ha-
    rassment included the placing of a swastika in a black
    pipefitter’s toolbox, the hanging of a Ku Klux Klan poster in
    a trailer used by black pipefitters during breaks, and the
    display of a hangman’s noose. That the effect of the graffiti
    and the other acts, considered together, was to create a hos-
    tile working environment for the black pipefitters is not in
    doubt. The only question is the union’s legal responsibility.
    Dennis Hahney, the union steward for the Robbins project
    and also Foster Wheeler’s superintendent of pipefitting, and
    No. 02-2057                                                  3
    in the latter capacity essentially the superintendent of the
    pipefitters assigned to the project, was aware of the graffiti,
    but he did nothing about them until Ferguson complained
    about the ones that mentioned him. Hahney responded by
    ordering a foreman to paint over the graffiti; and this was
    done. Hahney testified that if he were aware of a safety
    problem he would take action, and indeed that if he had
    thought the portable toilets needed cleaning he would have
    seen to it that they were cleaned. But he didn’t try to rid the
    toilets of graffiti. Another union official, Steven Toth, who
    also knew about the racially offensive graffiti, made no
    effort to eliminate them either, even though he had on his
    own initiative ordered the painting over of a drawing in one
    of the toilets of a penis and a vagina because he thought the
    drawing might be considered “a little offensive.” None of
    the black pipefitters complained to the union about the
    racially hostile environment created by their white cowork-
    ers except Ferguson, and his complaint was narrowly
    focused on the graffiti that referred to him rather than on
    the ones that referred to blacks in general.
    An employer who is aware of racial or sexual harassment
    that is making the workplace intolerable for the targets of
    the harassment, and does nothing to correct the situation, is
    guilty of violating Title VII. The EEOC argues that when the
    harassers and the targets are represented by a union, the
    union has exactly the same legal responsibility as the
    employer. Objections come quickly to mind. The employer
    is in a better position than the union to prevent or eliminate
    harassment because it can discipline its employees;
    the union cannot. If a worker complains to the union that he
    is being harassed, all the union can do is file a grievance on
    his behalf against the employer; the union cannot eliminate
    the harassment itself—that is the company’s responsibility.
    Since the employer is both fully liable for failing to take
    effective measures against coworker harassment and far
    4                                                 No. 02-2057
    better positioned to apply such measures, what is to be
    gained, except litigation clutter, by imposing the same lia-
    bility on the union? Foster Wheeler Constructors is a
    substantial firm and there is no suggestion that the EEOC
    could not obtain, on behalf of the eight black workers who
    were harassed, full relief against Foster Wheeler, which it
    also sued and which settled.
    A further consideration is that members of different un-
    ions, or union and nonunion workers, often find themselves
    working at the same site. Although the portable toilets in
    which racial graffiti were found were intended for the use
    primarily of pipefitters, other workers had access to and
    sometimes used them and may have been responsible for
    some of the graffiti. The pipefitters union had no control
    over workers belonging to other unions, or for that matter
    over the portable toilets.
    Unimpressed by practical considerations—determined, it
    seems, to show itself as being as formalistic as any
    court—the EEOC points to section 703(c) of Title VII, which
    forbids a union “to exclude or to expel from its membership,
    or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of
    his race, color,” etc. (emphasis added). It points out that the
    italicized words are similar to those in section 703(a), which
    forbids an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge
    any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any
    individual with respect to his compensation, terms, condi-
    tions, or privileges of employment, because of such individ-
    ual’s race, color,” etc. Therefore, the EEOC reasons, since an
    employer is guilty of discriminating if it unreasonably fails
    to correct a problem of coworker harassment, so must the
    union be. In other words, since the company is legally
    responsible for harassment by its employees, the union must
    be legally responsible for harassment by its members (more
    precisely, by members of the bargaining unit, since the
    No. 02-2057                                                    5
    union cannot insist that they become union members), even
    though they are the same people.
    The asserted symmetry between employer and union is
    spurious. The duties of nondiscrimination imposed by
    sections 703(a) and (c) have reference to the respective roles
    of company and union in the workplace. The company, not
    the union, controls the workplace, including the portable
    toilets erected at the site for use by the workers. The union
    is not the company, but the workers’ agent in dealing with
    the company. If it discriminates in the performance of its
    agency function, it violates Title VII, but not otherwise. Thus
    a union that refuses to accept blacks as members, or refuses
    to press their grievances, is guilty of discrimination. But if
    it merely fails to effectuate changes in the workplace—if for
    example it urges the company to take steps to prevent
    harassment and the company fails to do so—the union is not
    guilty of discrimination, though the company is. Notice that
    if the EEOC were right, the company would be liable for the
    union’s discriminating against black employees in the
    grievance process.
    The separate spheres, and correspondingly different
    responsibilities with regard to discrimination, of labor and
    management are blurred in the present case by the curious
    dual role of Hahney as union steward and supervising
    pipefitter. It seems doubtful, though the point is not pressed
    by any of the parties, that he was even legally eligible to be
    a union steward. In implementation of the National Labor
    Relations Act’s prohibition against company unions, the
    Labor Board has ruled that a supervisory employee of the
    company cannot hold a union post that would create
    divided loyalty and thus undermine the union. NLRB v.
    General Steel Erectors, Inc., 
    933 F.2d 568
     (7th Cir. 1991); Local
    636, United Ass’n of Journeymen v. NLRB, 
    287 F.2d 354
    , 361-62
    (D.C. Cir. 1961). Hahney’s dual role as company supervisor
    and union steward may have run afoul of this rule, but the
    6                                                 No. 02-2057
    only point important to this case is that his dual role makes
    it unclear whether Ferguson was complaining to him in his
    capacity as a union steward or in his capacity as a company
    supervisor. But it is probably the latter. Remember that
    Hahney ordered a foreman to paint out the graffiti that
    Ferguson had complained about. When Hahney did this he
    was acting for the company, because a union official has no
    authority to order workers to do anything. A union official
    qua union official cannot order a company foreman to see
    to it that a portable toilet is repainted any more than he can
    order the foreman to build a portable toilet.
    Ignoring Hahney’s anomalous status for the moment, we
    think the EEOC would if pressed concede that a union is not
    guilty of discrimination for trying but failing to rectify
    workplace harassment, and would argue instead that the
    union must do what it can even if success cannot be guar-
    anteed because the union does not operate the company.
    But inaction, unless invidious, is not discrimination in any
    accepted sense of the term. Most people don’t take active
    measures to combat discrimination; their inaction does not
    condemn them as discriminators. Suppose that a union is
    lackluster, and while it will file a grievance if pressed to do
    so by a member of the collective bargaining unit, it will do
    nothing on its own initiative. We do not understand how
    such passivity, though it means the union will not take
    measures to prevent racial harassment on its own initiative,
    could be thought a form of racial discrimination; yet that is
    the EEOC’s position. Unsurprisingly it has only limited
    judicial support. (The surprise is that it has any.) Woods v.
    Graphic Communications, 
    925 F.2d 1195
    , 1201 (9th Cir. 1991),
    says that an affirmative duty to prevent racial discrimina-
    tion “may exist,” but only Howard v. International Molders &
    Allied Workers Union, 
    779 F.2d 1546
    , 1553 (11th Cir. 1986),
    actually imposes such a duty. Thorn v. Amalgamated Transit
    Union, 
    305 F.3d 826
    , 832-33 (8th Cir. 2002), emphatically
    No. 02-2057                                                  7
    denies that there is such a duty; see also Goodman v. Lukens
    Steel Co., 
    482 U.S. 656
    , 687-89 (1987) (separate opinion). York
    v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 
    95 F.3d 948
    , 956-57 (10th Cir.
    1996), while holding that a union may not “acquiesce” in the
    employer’s unlawful discrimination, states that “mere
    inaction does not constitute acquiescence,” though it is
    unclear what the court means by “mere inaction.”
    An affirmative duty of the union to investigate and rectify
    discrimination by the employer derives no support from the
    statutory language, as we have seen, and fills no gap in the
    remedial scheme that the statute creates. Imposing such a
    duty would make for factually messy cases because the
    union’s power is so much more limited than the employer’s
    when it comes to making changes in personnel or work
    rules. (More precisely, because, so far as the evidence
    suggests, this union’s power over personnel and work rules
    is so much more limited than the employer’s; other unions,
    operating under other collective bargaining agreements,
    might be delegated additional powers that would alter the
    analysis in this opinion.) Suppose only one worker is
    harassing blacks. The union is not his employer and cannot
    fire him, so the question would be whether it had done all
    it could to get the company to fire him, and that will often
    be an impossible question to answer by the methods of
    litigation. There is also the awkwardness of asking the
    union to take sides in a dispute between two employees
    both of whom it has a statutory duty to represent fairly in
    any disciplinary proceeding by the employer.
    For all these reasons, we reject the EEOC’s contention that
    unions have an affirmative duty to prevent racial harass-
    ment or other forms of unlawful discrimination in the
    workplace. But this conclusion does not resolve the case
    because the district court had, and the EEOC defends, an
    alternative ground for deciding the case against the union.
    The ground is that the union’s inaction was selective. The
    8                                                  No. 02-2057
    union would take the initiative to solve other problems in
    the workplace, just not racial harassment.
    Evaluation of this argument requires us to distinguish
    among several types of case in which selective inaction by
    a union might be thought a form of discrimination. In the
    first, the union is vigilant to detect and correct mistreatment
    of white workers but has a policy of ignoring the interests
    of black ones. If a black worker asks the union to grieve a
    complaint, the union refuses, though if the worker were
    white the union would grieve his complaint. This is a clear
    violation not only of section 703(c) of Title VII, McDonald v.
    Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., 
    427 U.S. 273
    , 284-85 (1976);
    York v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., supra, 
    95 F.3d at 956
    , but also
    of the union’s duty of fair representation of all members of
    the collective bargaining unit, a point settled by the Su-
    preme Court many years before Title VII was enacted. Steele
    v. Louisville & Nashville R.R., 
    323 U.S. 192
    , 202-04 (1944).
    In the second type of case, the union is not bigoted, but it
    has decided as a matter of policy not to grieve complaints of
    discrimination by black members of the bargaining unit
    because the company is hostile to such complaints and the
    union fears that this hostility will make it harder for the
    union to succeed in its dealings with the company. This the
    Supreme Court held to be a form of discrimination in
    Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 
    482 U.S. 656
    , 668-69 (1987). It
    was an easy case, because it has never been a defense to a
    charge of discrimination that the discriminator was not
    actuated by racist or other invidious motives, but may just
    have been trying to maximize his profits, pursuant to the
    maxim that the only color that interests a businessman is
    green. It is not a defense for a shopkeeper who refuses to
    hire blacks that the only reason he does so is that his cus-
    tomers don’t like blacks.
    No. 02-2057                                                    9
    In a step beyond Goodman, suppose a union adopted a
    policy of not assisting workers who complain about racial
    or sexual harassment, whether they are white or black, male
    or female. The union believes that these workers have other
    remedies and that union intervention would unduly
    complicate the union’s role in dealing with the employer on
    behalf of all the workers composing the bargaining unit.
    Nevertheless it might be argued that, though unresponsive
    not to the interests of particular minorities such as its black
    workers or other protected groups as such but merely to the
    class of worker complaints that consists of complaints about
    discrimination, the union is refusing to take discrimination
    seriously and to that extent acquiescing in or at least
    condoning it by signaling to both the employer and the em-
    ployees its belief that discrimination is not a serious prob-
    lem. Cf. Salvadori v. Franklin School District, 
    293 F.3d 989
    , 998
    (7th Cir. 2002); Marquart v. Lodge 837, International Ass’n of
    Machinists & Aerospace Workers, 
    26 F.3d 842
    , 853 (8th Cir.
    1994).
    This is a tenuous theory of discrimination, and even more
    tenuous is a theory that would find discrimination in a
    fourth type of case, one in which there are no complaints
    but the union is proactive (i.e., takes the initiative) when it
    comes to safety and other matters, perhaps even to some
    forms of discrimination, while adopting a passive stance
    with regard to racial harassment. This fourth category takes
    us far beyond Goodman. The argument for liability in this
    class of cases would be that a union that is assiduous in
    assisting the workers whom it represents with some types
    of problem but indifferent to problems of racial discrimina-
    tion is treating such discrimination as something unimpor-
    tant, and to that extent, once again, is acquiescing in or
    condoning it. Suppose the reason Toth ordered the drawing
    of the penis and the vagina effaced, without his having been
    prompted to do so by a complaint from anyone, was that he
    10                                                No. 02-2057
    was trying to prevent sexual harassment. It could be argued
    that by failing to do the same with regard to racial graffito
    he would be signaling a belief that racial discrimination is
    less serious than sex discrimination. This could be thought
    to belittle the long and still continuing struggle of black
    Americans against racism. And, signals aside, the hard fact
    would be that blacks were getting less protection from the
    union than women were, and arbitrarily different treatment
    is the essence of discrimination. The objection to this theory
    is that uneven remediation of different forms of discrimina-
    tion may reflect nothing more than a need to determine
    priorities so that limited resources can be concentrated on
    the most urgent problems of discrimination facing a particu-
    lar employer (or union) at a particular site at a particular
    time, as in Schroeder v. Hamilton School District, 
    283 F.3d 946
    (7th Cir. 2002); see 
    id. at 958
     (concurring opinion). But we
    need not pursue the issue further. There is no evidence that
    Toth was concerned about sexual harassment when he
    ordered the deletion of the off-color drawing. Indeed, there
    is no indication that any of the pipefitters on the Robbins
    project were women.
    What the EEOC is left to argue is that the fact that Toth
    once showed initiative with respect to a workplace problem,
    acting without waiting for a complaint to efface the sexual
    graffito, and that Hahney acknowledged that if he noticed
    a dirty toilet he might order it cleaned up and if he noticed
    a safety problem he would try to solve it even if in neither
    case a worker complained, is evidence of a policy of subor-
    dinating racial to other workplace problems. The evidence
    is insolubly ambiguous. Toth’s single act of self-activated
    intervention was not an assumption by the union of respon-
    sibility to police the Robbins project for any and all work-
    place problems and take action if it noticed one. This single
    act could have created no reliance reasonable or otherwise
    on the part of the black pipefitters that they would have no
    No. 02-2057                                                11
    need to complain about harassment—that the union would
    act without any prompting.
    The interpretation of Hahney’s conduct is fogged by his
    anomalous dual role. When he said he would order a dirty
    toilet cleaned up or a safety problem attended to, it is un-
    clear whether he would be doing so as a union steward or
    as a company supervisor. But the latter is the more likely
    interpretation because, as we noted earlier, while a union
    steward could complain to the company about a dirty toilet,
    he couldn’t order it cleaned up.
    We are miles from Goodman, where the union refused as
    a matter of policy to grieve complaints about discrimination
    against black members of the bargaining unit. The
    pipefitters union had no such policy. The case would be no
    different in any realistic sense had Toth left that drawing
    alone. The union qua union did very little other than in re-
    sponse to complaints—too little in our view to justify the
    district judge’s inferring a policy of treating discrimination
    problems differently from other workplace problems, even
    if that were a viable basis for liability.
    The judgment is reversed with instructions to enter judg-
    ment for the union.
    REVERSED.
    12                                                 No. 02-2057
    ROVNER, Circuit Judge, dissenting. My colleagues’ analysis
    is premised on the notion that the union has no control over
    workplace conditions and so lacks the authority to deal with
    workplace harassment of the kind proven in this case. E.g.,
    ante at 5 (“[t]he company, not the union, controls the
    workplace”). Confining liability to the company on that
    basis has the appeal of simplicity, but it may not always
    comport with reality. My brothers themselves leave room
    for the possibility that a collective bargaining agreement
    might confer upon a union sufficient power vis- à-vis per-
    sonnel assignments and work rules to expose the union to
    liability for workplace discrimination. Ante at 7. Authority
    is not always conveyed formally, however (see, e.g., Kujawski
    v. Board of Commissioners of Bartholomew County, Ind., 
    183 F.3d 734
    , 739-40 (7th Cir. 1999) (policymaking authority);
    Moriarty v. Glueckert Funeral Home, Ltd., 
    155 F.3d 859
    , 865-66
    (7th Cir. 1998) (agency principles)), and we should not close
    our eyes to the realities of the workplace, particularly in
    view of the broad remedial purposes of Title VII and section
    1981 (see, e.g., Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 
    392 U.S. 409
    , 437,
    
    88 S. Ct. 2186
    , 2202 (1968), quoting United States v. Price, 
    383 U.S. 787
    , 801, 
    86 S. Ct. 1152
    , 1160 (1966); Veprinsky v. Fluor
    Daniel, Inc., 
    87 F.3d 881
    , 889 (7th Cir. 1996)). Where the facts
    reveal that, in practice, the union enjoys significant control
    over working conditions and has the power to correct work-
    place inequities, it is appropriate to hold it liable for failing
    to do so on the same basis as the employer.
    The evidence in this case permits the inference that the
    pipefitters’ union in fact did have control over significant
    aspects of the Robbins workplace, including the ability to
    address precisely the type of discrimination at issue here.
    The person who functioned as the union steward, Dennis
    Hahney, was also the piping superintendent for Foster
    Wheeler. As such, Hahney hired pipefitters for the Robbins
    project (R. 290-2 at 417), chose foremen and everyone else in
    No. 02-2057                                                   13
    the chain of command beneath him (id. at 429), decided
    whom to lay off when workforce reductions were necessary
    (id. at 418, 501-02), laid out the work for pipefitters to be
    completed at any given time (id. at 418), doled out work
    assignments (id. at 459-60), walked the job site to see that
    pipe was being installed as planned (id. at 473), made sure
    that everyone had a safe work environment (id. at 439), and
    strove to maintain “some sort of semblance of peace”
    among the pipefitters (id. at 471). It was Hahney’s responsi-
    bility to see that things ran smoothly between the company
    and the pipefitters (id. at 418) by, among other things, en-
    suring that none of the pipefitters was “hassle[d]”(id. at
    421). Hahney’s testimony makes clear that he had at least
    some power to resolve workplace issues on his own. He
    testified, for example, that he would have acted independ-
    ently to remedy any safety problem he noticed. Id. at 439.
    His testimony also suggests that his authority extended to
    the conditions of the portable toilets at the Robbins project
    that were the situs of the graffiti underlying the plaintiffs’
    harassment claim. Although those toilets were leased by
    Foster Wheeler and were cleaned by the contractor that
    supplied them, Hahney testified that he would have taken
    steps to have them cleaned if necessary (id. at 423, 489); in-
    deed, on one occasion when workers were tracking snow
    into the toilets, he arranged for laborers on the job site to
    clean them out (id. at 461-62). So the notion that Foster
    Wheeler had exclusive control over the toilets and thus the
    sole authority to deal with the graffiti is an illusion. Lest
    there be any doubt on that score, one need only recall that
    when the union’s business agent, Steven Toth, noticed sex-
    ual graffiti in one of toilets that he thought “might be a little
    offensive” (R. 290-3 at 514) he took the initiative to have it
    dealt with (id. at 513-15). Moreover, when Toth learned that
    pipefitter James Ferguson had complained about some of
    the racial graffiti in the toilets, Toth immediately turned to
    14                                                  No. 02-2057
    Hahney and admonished him, “[W]e can’t stand for that. If
    there’s anything like that in the port-a-johns, see your pow-
    ers to be and have the laborers paint them over.” Id. at 517.
    Although Toth opined on the witness stand that “[i]t was
    Foster Wheeler’s job to get rid of [the graffiti]” (id. at 518),
    his conduct and his remarks to Hahney suggest that the re-
    sponsibility in fact was not Foster Wheeler’s alone and that
    the union did not treat it as such.
    On these facts, it was a fair inference that the union had
    the power to deal with the racially-charged graffiti defacing
    the toilets, but intentionally acquiesced in the harassment
    rather than exercising its authority to remove the graffiti.
    That is precisely the inference that Judge Coar drew after
    hearing the evidence, and I can see no clear error in that as-
    sessment. After all, it is undisputed that Hahney, at least,
    was aware of the rampant graffiti on the walls of the toilets.
    See, e.g., R. 290-2 at 423, 426. The offensive character of that
    graffiti was obvious. As Judge Coar put it, “Only a visitor
    from another planet would fail to understand the ugliness
    of what was written and drawn on those walls.” 
    2002 WL 976618
    , at *7. The evidence does not bespeak a perception
    by union officials that they were powerless to act. Again,
    Hahney expressed no reservation about taking independent
    action to correct a workplace safety problem or to clean up
    a dirty toilet, and Toth did act to have sexually-charged
    graffiti removed from one of the toilets, recognizing its
    offensive character. Given the union’s evident willingness
    and ability to address sexual graffiti, it is an entirely fair and
    permissible inference that the union was deliberately
    indifferent to the rampant racial graffiti that defaced the
    toilets.
    Only if we dismiss the authority exercised by union offi-
    cials such as Hahney and Toth can we say that there was no
    basis for imposing liability on the union. My colleagues
    No. 02-2057                                                   15
    reason that when union steward Hahney was dealing with
    personnel and work issues, he was acting for the company,
    not the union, and so could not expose the union to liability
    for his failure to redress the graffiti problem. Ante at 6, 11.
    This neat division of Hahney’s two roles strikes me as arti-
    ficial, however. Hahney’s own testimony reflects no such
    bisection of his responsibilities. See, e.g., R. 290-2 at 418-20;
    
    2002 WL 976618
    , at * 4 ¶ 60. It may well have been inappro-
    priate for the union to make Hahney its steward given his
    management responsibilities. Ante at 5-6. Whether that deci-
    sion was well thought out or not, anomalous or not, we do
    not know. But having placed a management official in the
    role of union steward, the union ought to bear the conse-
    quences—good and bad—of that decision. Hahney’s testi-
    mony suggests that in his dual role, he had the authority to
    address the graffiti. Toth’s testimony about removing the
    sexual graffiti confirms that union officials not only could
    but on one occasion did take initiative to remediate this type
    of problem. Toth’s initiative on that occasion may not, by
    itself, establish that the union had assumed responsibility to
    correct any and all workplace problems (see ante at 10-11),
    but coupled with Hahney’s testimony it at least belies the
    notion that the union lacked the power to address the
    graffiti that defaced the toilet walls. The union’s de facto
    authority—unexercised despite the patently offensive
    nature of the graffiti—supports the district court’s decision
    to impose liability on the union.
    We need not wring our hands in worry about the awk-
    ward position in which a union might find itself if we obli-
    gate unions to take action where some of its members are
    harassing or otherwise discriminating against other mem-
    bers, as apparently was the case here. See ante at 7. Unions
    already are called upon routinely to navigate a thorny path
    between the clashing interests of their members. See, e.g.,
    Thorn v. Amalgamated Transit Union, 
    305 F.3d 826
    , 833 (8th
    16                                                 No. 02-2057
    Cir. 2002) (“When the employer investigates a sexual ha-
    rassment claim by one union member against another, the
    union has a statutory duty to fairly represent both in their
    disciplinary dealings with the employer.”). My colleagues
    may be correct in holding that, as a general rule, unions
    have no affirmative duty to prevent discrimination in the
    workplace. But it seems to me that a union may nonetheless
    take on that obligation if, as the facts suggest was true at the
    Robbins project, union officials assume responsibility for the
    type of workplace conditions that later give rise to a dis-
    crimination claim. Having voluntarily crossed the boundary
    separating the company’s domain from the union’s, see ante
    at 5, the pipefitters’ union was not free to turn a blind eye to
    the racial graffiti that was staring its officials in the face.
    I respectfully dissent.
    A true Copy:
    Teste:
    _____________________________
    Clerk of the United States Court of
    Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
    USCA-02-C-0072—7-1-03