Ex-Employees File Suit Against Health Tecna

KENT

Don Chamberlain was hoping to retire when he turns 65 in three years, but he'll have to keep working.

The Renton resident says he'll never fully recover from being laid off by Heath Tecna Aerospace Co. two years ago.

"It really knocked my financial plans into a cocked hat," says the 62-year-old engineer.

Now, Chamberlain and a former Heath Tecna colleague have filed an age-discrimination suit against the company. Chamberlain and Edward Swanlund, along with 26 other Heath Tecna employees, were let go in October 1990. Attorney Susan Keers says Heath Tecna was trying to cut expenses by getting rid of older, highly paid professionals such as Swanlund and Chamberlain.

Heath Tecna officials deny the company violated state or federal age-discrimination laws.

"The company believes they have no case," says Larry Kring, Heath Tecna's president and chief executive.

Kring says the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated complaints submitted by Swanlund and Chamberlain, but decided Heath Tecna did not discriminate against the men. Heath Tecna provided copies of a letter sent to the company in May by Jeanette Leino, the employment commission's local district director.

"I have determined that the evidence obtained during the investigation does not establish a violation of the (anti-discrimination) statute," Leino writes.

An employment commission official would not comment on the case yesterday.

Keers admits she does not yet have a smoking gun, proving that Heath Techna discriminated against Chamberlain and Swanlund. She plans to obtain further evidence before the trial, now scheduled for March 1994, in King County Superior Court.

"I don't have specific documents proving it, but I believe it's a good faith filing," she says.

Keers says most of the people laid off with Chamberlain and Swanlund were over 40, the age to which discrimination laws apply. Heath Tecna laid the workers off to save its parent company money, she says.

The suit asks to give Chamberlain and Swanlund back pay, and double punitive damages for "emotional distress." Both men have found jobs, but at lower salaries.

"It's had a pretty devastating impact on both of them," Keers says.

Heath Tecna is a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Ciba-Geigy Corp. One of the Seattle region's biggest manufacturers, with annual sales of about $100 million, it makes composite parts and interiors for commercial airliners, including Boeing planes. It employs 1,350 people at its plant here, and 150 more in Bellingham.

Karen White, the company's vice president of human resources, admits that 70 percent of the workers laid off in October 1990, were over the age of 40. But older workers were not targeted in the layoff, she says.

Swanlund and Chamberlain were neither the oldest nor the highest paid in their departments, says White. Swanlund was making $53,000 a year when he was let go, while Chamberlain was making about $65,000 annually. White says both men were selected for layoff because they were specialized engineers in programs being phased out, or slowed down by Heath Tecna.

Chamberlain worked on the company's space-related programs, while Swanlund was in research and development, which is being done more by Ciba Geigy's composites division in Anaheim, Calif., says White.

"The programs had diminished to the point that specialized engineering support wasn't necessary," she says.

But court papers say Chamberlain was head of a joint Boeing-Heath Tecna team, redesigning components for the Boeing 757. Chamberlain was also working in the company's operations department, to help solve "severe scheduling and delivery problems." After he was laid off, other people had to complete his work, the court papers say.

Swanlund, who is in his mid-50s, was a senior engineer on Heath Techna's Boeing 757 program, and a continuing engineer and program manager on numerous other projects, including General Electric satellite components, court papers say.