Based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Johnson Controls was the largest manufacturer of automobile batteries for the U.S. replacement market.76 Known chiefly for the production of control instruments for heating, lighting, and other electrical functions, Johnson Controls was also the largest independent supplier of automobile seating, and the company provided many small components for cars and light trucks. In 1978, Johnson Controls purchased Globe Union, Inc., a battery manufacturer. By 1990, the Globe Battery Division of Johnson Controls was operating 14 plants nationwide and employed approximately 5,400 people. Batteries accounted for roughly 18 percent of Johnson Controls’ sales and 17 percent of operating income.

Lead plates, which are essential for an automobile battery, are formed by compressing a paste of lead oxide. In this process, lead dust and lead vapor are released into the work area. Lead has been known for centuries to cause extensive neurological damage, and recent studies have shown that it affects the body’s cardiovascular system, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Children who are exposed to lead, through eating peeling lead-based paint, for example, exhibit hyperactivity, short attention span, and learning difficulties. Lead in a pregnant woman’s bloodstream can affect the neurological development of an unborn child, resulting in mental retardation, impaired motor control, and behavioral abnormalities. Pregnant women exposed to lead also run an increased risk of spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth. Although the effects of lead on men are less well understood, studies have shown some genetic damage to sperm that might cause birth defects.n
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Prior to Johnson Controls’ purchase of Globe Union, the battery manufacturer had instituted a comprehensive program to minimize lead exposure in the workplace and to keep employees from carrying lead home on their bodies and clothing. Although no legal standards for lead exposure existed at the time, Globe Union routinely tested employees’ blood lead levels and transferred employees with readings of 50 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dl) of blood to other jobs without loss of pay until their levels had dropped to 30 µg/dl. In 1978, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) set a permissible exposure limit for lead of 50 µg/dl. OSHA did not establish a separate standard for pregnant women but recommended that both men and women who planned to conceive maintain blood levels below 30 µg/dl. OSHA concluded that there is no reason to exclude women of childbearing age from jobs involving lead exposure.n
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In 1977, as more women began working in battery production, Globe Union informed women employees of the hazards of lead and asked them to sign a statement that they had been told of the risks of having a child while exposed to lead in the workplace. Between 1979 and 1983, after Johnson Controls acquired Globe Union, eight women with blood lead levels in excess of 30 µg/dl became pregnant. In response, Johnson Controls changed its policy in 1982 to exclude fertile women from all jobs where lead is present. Specifically, the policy stated, “It is [Johnson Controls’] policy that women who are pregnant or who are capable of bearing children will not be placed into jobs involving lead exposure or which could expose them to lead through the exercise of job bidding, bumping, transfer or promotion rights.” The policy defined women “capable of bearing children” as “all women except those whose inability to bear children is medically documented.” In defending this policy, Johnson Controls maintained that a voluntary approach had failed and that to permit lead poisoning of unborn children was “morally reprehensible.” Undoubtedly, the company was also concerned with its legal liability.n
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In April 1984, a class-action suit was filed by several workers and their union, the United Auto Workers, charging that Johnson Controls’ fetal-protection policy violated the Title VII prohibition in the Civil Rights Act against sex discrimination. The policy is discriminatory, the employees complained, because it singled out fertile women for exclusion, when evidence indicates that lead also poses a hazard to the reproductive capacities of men. Although Title VII permits exceptions for bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQs), the inability to bear children has no relevance to the job of making a battery and therefore cannot be a legitimate BFOQ. Johnson Controls’ fetal-protection policy applied to women who had no intention of becoming pregnant and those who might choose to accept the risk for the sake of keeping their jobs. The policy also offered women a choice of becoming sterile or losing their job, which some regarded as coercive. Among the employees suing were a woman who had chosen to be sterilized in order to keep her job, a 50-year-old divorcée who had been forced to accept a demotion because of the policy, and a man who had requested a leave of absence in order to reduce his blood lead level before becoming a father.n
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Executives at Chicago-based Kolcraft Enterprises became aware, in early February 1993, of two accidental deaths involving a discontinued product, the Travel-Lite crib.77 An 11-month-old boy in California and a 9-month-old girl in Arkansas suffocated to death when the portable cribs in which they had been placed suddenly collapsed, trapping their necks in the “V” formed by the two halves of the folding unit’s top rails. News of these fatalities reached Sanfred Koltun, the CEO of the family-owned company and son of the founder, in a letter from the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). The letter, dated February 1, 1993, requested information from Kolcraft about the design and testing of the Travel-Lite crib as part of the commission’s responsibility to determine “whether a defect is present in a product and, if so, whether the defect rises to the level of a substantial risk of injury to children.”

Questions: 

Given the broad precedent-setting scope of the ruling, could this be regarded as somewhat of a ‘hollow victory?’ While the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the plaintiffs, aren’t the Occupational Health concerns still outstanding? That is, although they have the right to do so, should women and men in the family-building stages of their lives work in high fetal-risk environments?