Say Anything Blog

Because that would be discrimination:

...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote just this month. “I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it’s discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, ‘I want you to be able to speak America’s common language on the job,’ ” he told the Senate last Thursday.

But that’s exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do. In March the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required its employees to speak English on the job. The requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. The EEOC claimed the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job. It said that the firings violated the law because the English-only policy was not “relevant” to job performance or safety.

Maybe having employees who speak Spanish only would be ok in places like California or New York, but let’s remember that the whole country isn’t like California or New York.  In places like Minnesota or North Dakota, everyone speaks English.  So having an employee who can’t speak English isn’t going to be much of an asset to an employer who needs that employee to be able to communicate with customers and other employees. 

But if the Democrats and the EEOC gets their way, employers won’t be able to fire (or even refuse to hire) people who can’t speak English even if speaking English is a necessary part of the job.