McNerney era at heart of suit against 3M

Attorneys argued before a packed St. Paul courtroom Wednesday in a high-stakes age-discrimination case against 3M Co.

At issue is whether a proposed class-action lawsuit that would represent nearly 6,000 current and former 3M employees can go to trial on the claim that they were targeted by the company and treated unfairly during the tenure of former CEO W. James McNerney Jr.

McNerney left 3M in the summer of 2005 and now is the CEO of Boeing, where he has given interviews in which he praised the idea of creating a collegial corporate culture. The suit against 3M paints a different picture of his tenure at the Maplewood manufacturer, arguing that older workers were forced out of jobs or denied raises and training under policies McNerney put in place.

Arguing before Ramsey County District Judge Gregg Johnson, 3M's attorneys said the three-year-old case should not receive class-action status. They said the plaintiffs' lawyers skewed the facts by excluding pay data concerning 3M's entire senior management team in drawing their conclusions about how older workers fared during the time in question.

3M attorney Tom Tinkham of Dorsey & Whitney said the true size of the group of people involved is 200 to 300, not the 5,906 workers that plaintiffs attorneys claim.

In the suit, originally filed in December 2004, several dozen middle-age and older workers said they had been discriminated against or forced out of jobs.

"Of course 3M is not taking the position that older employees are less valued than younger employees. The fact that 3M's leadership is represented almost entirely by older workers disproves their point," Tinkham said. He also argued that the plaintiffs' case lacked the "commonality" required by law to be certified as a class, and that their complaints about pay raises, promotions, performance evaluations and leadership training constitute "individual and disparate" issues.

A number of current and former 3M workers were on hand to hear the arguments, and several responded to defense statements by shaking their heads.

Several complained during a recess that they'd been forced out of their jobs, denied promotions and, in a few cases, told plainly by bosses that they were too old for management positions or Six Sigma training because they were over age 50.

"Anybody over 50 feels like we have a target on our backs," said one worker, who didn't want to be named for fear of retribution. "It's the young [Six Sigma] black belts who get the jobs and promotions, even when they don't have" the experience.

Plaintiff Michael Mucci left 3M in 2004. "You saw them picking older people out when McNerney ordered it was clean-the-decks time," he said. "They could make life extremely unpleasant" for those who didn't retire, he said.

Plaintiffs attorney Michael Lieder told Johnson that the case meets all the requirements for class-action status, because statistical research showed that workers over age 46 were adversely affected by the central human-resources policies from 2001 to 2005.

Lieder showed the court internal executive e-mails that he claimed showed a pattern.

In one, a manager wrote to a worker, "You do understand that you are too old to be promoted into management. We are friends so you didn't hear that from me."

Tinkham countered that 3M's research came to the opposite conclusion -- that promotions and pay raises increased with a worker's age during the class period.

Attorneys for both sides will meet again before Johnson in February. At that time, the judge may rule on the class-action issue and on whether to seal evidence, as requested by 3M.

Dee DePass • 612-673-7725