01-2255 Wells v. Unisource Worldwide, Inc.

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“Despite its concession that Wells had established a prima facie case, Unisource did come forward with two legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for its action. Unisource argued that it realigned the credit administrator positions in order to facilitate communication between its credit department and its sales department offices located in Appleton and New Berlin, Wisconsin, and secondly to improve customer relations and account collection in the region being served.”

“Wells … asserts that Unisource’s decision to transfer her position was pretextual because no white credit admin istrators were transferred and that less senior, white employees’ positions were not transferred. But Wells ignores the fact that Unisource transferred the credit administrator position occupied by Betsy Novinski, a white female, from Itasca, Illinois, to New Berlin, Wisconsin. Indeed, Unisource relocated the positions of each of the two credit administrators in Itasca, Illinois, who handled Wisconsin-based accounts-both Wells’s position and Novinski’s position. Thus, the other Itasca credit administrators who were not transferred were not similarly situated to Wells because their work assignments differed from hers in that they were exclusively assigned to dealing with Illinois-based accounts, and not Wisconsin-based accounts. Under the law, Wells cannot establish pretext by pointing to employees who were not similarly situated to her.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Lindberg, J., Coffey, J.