The footwear leaves: the 1968 announcement and the Chrapliwy case

1968 – 1982

The premise corrected: The plant's end is often told as a single 1969 shutdown. The record shows otherwise, and this entry prints the record: what happened in 1968–70 was the removal of the footwear divisions — the original business, and the maker of the name — from a plant that then worked twenty-eight more years on its other lines. The civic wound was real, and its legal aftermath was historic; neither requires the plant to have closed in 1969, and it did not.

The announcement and the phase-out: On 22 March 1968 Uniroyal publicly announced that it would transfer production of waterproof and canvas footwear from Mishawaka to Naugatuck, Connecticut, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island, phasing the footwear work out over two years — the findings of the federal court in Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 458 F. Supp. 252 (N.D. Ind. 1977), fix the date, the destinations, and the two-year course. The footwear divisions employed approximately forty-two percent of the plant's workforce; the opinion's table gives 1,364 footwear employees — 562 in one division and 802 in the other — before the shutdown of the lines. Layoffs began in November 1968 and ran to several hundred over the two years. The library's summary dates the accomplishment: footwear was discontinued in 1969. Announcement and accomplishment are printed separately, as they stand: announced March 1968, phased over two years, the lines gone by 1969–70.

Who bore it: The court's findings fix the phase-out's weight by sex: about fifty-nine percent of the plant's women worked in the footwear divisions, against thirty percent of its men — so the transfer fell, in the first instance, on the women who had been more than half the wartime workforce. In November and December 1969 the company mailed a form letter to 260 laid-off women declaring their layoffs permanent and cutting off their supplemental unemployment benefits, on the findings reviewed in the case's 1981 chapter, 509 F. Supp. 442. One of the 260 was Alta Chrapliwy, hired at the plant in 1959 and laid off in August 1969 — her obituary and the court's record together fix her dates.

The case: On 13 January 1970 Chrapliwy and seven fellow workers went to the Chicago office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and filed charges. Suit followed on 28 November 1972, against Uniroyal and against Local 65. In 1973 Judge Beamer's partial summary judgment found that the layoffs had been conducted on a segregated basis by sex and that discriminatory starting pay rates had run at the plant to 1970. The case closed by settlement decree in 1981, under Judge Grant: Uniroyal was ordered to pay 526 women $4,758,000 in cash and approximately an equal amount in future pension benefits, to reinstate 296 class members with full seniority, and to reform the plant's employment system. The Seventh Circuit's 1982 chapter of the case, 670 F.2d 760, concerned attorney's fees. The South Bend Tribune's 2000 retrospective names the case in the city's own shorthand: "Lawyers know Uniroyal was the object of a landmark sex discrimination case." The ruling's ground was the Mishawaka plant's own segregated job structure — the "men's" and "women's" departments of a rubber works — and the decree reached beyond the 260 letters to the whole class of the plant's women.

Sources:

1. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 458 F. Supp. 252 (N.D. Ind. 1977) — the announcement of 22 March 1968, the transfers to Naugatuck and Woonsocket, the two-year phase-out, footwear at approximately forty-two percent of the workforce, the 1,364 footwear employees (562 and 802), layoffs from November 1968, and the fifty-nine/thirty percent division of the burden by sex.
2. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 509 F. Supp. 442 (1981) — the November–December 1969 form letters to 260 women and the settlement decree: 526 women, $4,758,000 in cash and approximately as much again in pension benefits, 296 reinstated with full seniority.
3. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 670 F.2d 760 (7th Cir. 1982) — the attorney's-fees chapter.
4. Obituary of Alta Chrapliwy — hired 1959, laid off August 1969, and the EEOC filing of 13 January 1970 with seven fellow workers.
5. Mishawaka-Penn Public Library summary — footwear discontinued in 1969.
6. South Bend Tribune, "Voice of the People," 2000 — the "landmark sex discrimination case" in the city's shorthand.