So you can't even require english at your own business. Democrats are nuts.

[Rhylan]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

Here, the requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. According to the original post, anyway.

Yup, my point was, what kind of job requirement is it, if you can do the job without it, for a YEAR?

Sure, I believe in employers' rights to hire & fire at will, as previously stated, but in today's legal climate, the above is just plain dumb. If you want something to be a requirement, you better make it a requirement.

[dalmations202]

They just weren't perky enough after a year? or They shouldn't have been hired at all?

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Rhylan

Yup, my point was, what kind of job requirement is it, if you can do the job without it, for a YEAR?

Sure, I believe in employers' rights to hire & fire at will, as previously stated, but in today's legal climate, the above is just plain dumb. If you want something to be a requirement, you better make it a requirement.

I agree, but would cut them some slack as a charitable organization. Isn't that part of what they do, make some iffy hires to help out some people who might not be hireable elsewhere?

I don't know. Even if not, I've been at jobs in which there was a significant amount of onthejob training expected before I would be up to speed. I think it's fine to hire someone with the expectation that they might not produce for some time (Fazekas, ahem, ahem, Fazekas). Firing them if they don't keep up their part of the learning curve should be allowable. If the "English only" sign and year leeway were in place when these people were hired, I'd think that would go at least a little ways in the area of COA that you mentioned above.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Rhylan

Here's the bottom line...

You can't prove or claim that speaking English is required for a job if you're willing to hire people who don't speak English.

They shouldn't have hired them in the first place, if what they wanted & needed were people who spoke English.

While I don't agree with the notion taken by some that a governmental agency or force can objectively look at a job description and decide FOR an employer what the required skills are, the real bottom line is that the employer's own hiring practices are a reflection of the true skill requirements.

On the other hand, the employer has a right to change their minds. If in 2005, they did not believe English was a requirement, but through experience, decided it should be, they have every right to do a skills upgrade.. but they better be well prepared to sleep in the bed they made by having poorly thought out hiring practicies to begin with. Which means heavily documenting why you need to get rid of the non-English speakers, or finding a different job for them, or what have you.

In principle, I believe in hiring & firing at-will for whatever reason. Business pay a price for poor hiring practices. The definition of poor hiring practice being one that negatively affects the bottom line - never forget that businesses are in business to make money, not to provide employment.

So in our litigous society you are much,much better off to never hire someone who speaks spanish than to hire them and help them get the training for it. Sounds about right, the guvment doing something that anyone with common-sense wouldn't, hurting the very folks they think they are helping.

[Mavdog]

you're right ul, the fact that it's a chairitable org makes me scratch my head and ask why would they be so draconian with these employees? real tough love?

it's not too hard to fire a worker in the us. all you need to defend yourself in a claim is to have a dated work record noting poor performance.

this is a huge issue in europe, especially france. if you hire a worker there and they don't work out it takes years to fire them. years! so guess what? business is reluctant to give anyone a chance, especially a second chance.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

you're right ul, the fact that it's a chairitable org makes me scratch my head and ask why would they be so draconian with these employees? real tough love?

don't put words in my mouth. Personally, I think the charitable thing would be to hire someone and make them more hirable so that they could get a better job elsewhere. However Salvation Army wants to handle their business should be up to them, not me or you, or the government.

it's not too hard to fire a worker in the us. all you need to defend yourself in a claim is to have a dated work record noting poor performance.

the evidence in this case would be them refusing to speak english at work.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

don't put words in my mouth. Personally, I think the charitable thing would be to hire someone and make them more hirable so that they could get a better job elsewhere. However Salvation Army wants to handle their business should be up to them, not me or you, or the government.

oh, so you didn't really mean it when you said "Isn't that part of what they do, make some iffy hires to help out some people who might not be hireable elsewhere?"

the salvation army needs to follow the laws jst like every other business. it is up to the government to make certain they do.

the evidence in this case would be them refusing to speak english at work.

apparently that is not "the evidence", or this issue/case wouldn't be out there.

[Jack.Kerr]

A few points about this thread have left nagging questions for me. It seems like a lot of people involved with the case itself as well as the ensuing legislation and political fracas are trying to twist the case to their own political purposes.

1) The two Spanish-speaking workers had worked at the Salvation Army for FIVE (5) years before someone at this particular SA decided that they should be able to speak English to sort clothes.

2) There is a huge difference between:
A) saying that English-language skills are necessary for job performance (such as when dealing with English-only speaking customers, or dealing with a supervisor who only speaks English); and
B) prohibiting any use of a language other than English during working hours (such as private conversations between two native Spanish speakers, or telephone calls to one's spouse or children).

Apparently it was more the latter that constituted the alleged violations of policy in this case.

3) Anyone who knows anything at all about learning a foreign language knows that one year is not enough time to become proficient in a foreign language, all the more so in the case of adult language learners, who may have had limited educations in their native language, and indeed who may have had limited literacy in their native language. One year to become proficient simply would not be a reasonable time frame, even if the English-language requirement were legitimate.

4) Wouldn't the ability to speak a foreign language be a valuable job skill itself, particularly in a thrift store that attracted shoppers and/or donors from a significant Spanish-speaking community? It sounds like the Salvation Army may not have made a good faith attempt to take advantage of the skills that these women in fact had. In five years, couldn't they have reasonably been advanced from clothes sorter to bi-lingual shop assistant?

This case sounds a whole lot more like a case where two workers got crossways with a monolingual supervisor, who then looked for a pretext to retaliate against the employees; or perhaps a new manager came in wanting to make a social/political statement by implementing a dubious language requirement, with the two clothes-sorting Spanish speakers bearing the cost of said manager's political expression. Employees certainly deserve reasonable protections against such unreasonable abuses in either case.

Congress in Tiff Over English-Only Rules
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — A government suit against the Salvation Army has the House and Senate at loggerheads over whether to nullify a law that prohibits employers from firing people who don't speak English on the job.

The fight illustrates the explosiveness of immigration as an issue in the 2008 elections.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are pushing hard to protect employers who require their workers to speak English, but Democratic leaders have blocked the move despite narrow vote tallies in the GOP's favor.

For more than 30 years, federal rules have generally barred employers from establishing English-only requirements for their workers. But Senate Republicans have won passage of legislation preventing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from enforcing the rules.

House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, have promised Hispanic lawmakers that the language issue is a nonstarter and the resulting impasse has stalled the underlying budget bill, which lawmakers had hoped to send to President Bush this week.

The EEOC has come under assault from lawmakers such as Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., after the agency filed suit earlier this year against a Salvation Army thrift store in Massachusetts that had fired two Hispanic employees for speaking Spanish while sorting clothes.

Supporters of the EEOC regulation — which can be waived if there is a legitimate business or safety purpose to require English — say it protects workers from discrimination based on their national origin, which is barred under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

"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,'" Alexander said Thursday.

"You can have English-only rules ... if in fact that English-only rule is relevant to job performance, safety, efficiency and so on," countered Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas. "If it is not relevant, if it is discriminatory, if it is gratuitous, if it is a subterfuge to discriminate against people based on national origin — which we know that's what it is — the EEOC doesn't allow it."

The EEOC took on the Salvation Army case because sorting clothes doesn't require speaking English.

"These women had worked at the location for five years sorting donations without any complaints about their conversing in Spanish," EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru said at a commission meeting earlier this year.

In other cases, the agency has defended workers who complained they weren't allowed to speak their native languages while on their lunch break or in telephone conversations with their spouses.

English-only lawsuits are in fact brought only rarely, the EEOC says. The agency averages just five lawsuits a year for all language-related discrimination issues. The Salvation Army case filed in April is the most recent English-only suit filed. English-only complaints accounted for less than 0.2 percent of all those filed with the agency last year.

In most instances, the EEOC lawsuits are settled out of court, with employers changing their policies and paying relatively modest damages.

"If and when we file an English-only lawsuit — which is rare to begin with — the usual result is a voluntary settlement," said EEOC spokesman David Grinberg. "If you look at the big picture, it's a very small part of what we do here."

In April, however, a geriatric care center in New York City agreed to pay $900,000 to settle an EEOC lawsuit based on an English-only policy that barred Haitian and Jamaican employees from speaking in Creole but allowed Hispanic and other employees to speak Spanish or other languages. The policy was part of a broader discrimination based on their race and national origin.

Alexander successfully attached the English-in-the-workplace provision to the EEOC budget bill on an Appropriations Committee vote in June, with the support of three Democrats — including the panel's chairman, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

In the House, Gonzalez and other Hispanic members narrowly won a vote in July to reject a move to prevent the EEOC from pursuing English-only discrimination cases. But the result was reversed last week on a nonbinding 218-186 vote urging House negotiators on the underlying budget bill to accept the Alexander's language.

Outraged Hispanics said Democratic leaders didn't adequately get members on board for the vote and they have won a promise from Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Alexander's English-only provision will be killed. House-Senate negotiations on the underlying bill have been put off indefinitely.

Alexander says he offered watered-down language to require the agency to give notification in advance when filing cases, but that it's been rejected by House Democrats.

He insists he's not anti-immigrant, but that speaking English is crucial for immigrants to assimilate into society.

"One way to make sure that we have a ... a little more unity that is our country's greatest accomplishment is to make certain that we value our common language," Alexander said Thursday. "And that we not devalue it by allowing a federal agency to say that it is a violation of federal law for an employer in America to require an employee to speak English on the job."

[George Gervin]

So this boils down to a conversation between two people at work? Why waste the energy and tax payer time on an issue like this? We have wasted enough time on troop withdrawals and time tables during this Congressional session. This move is one to placate the conservative base and nothing more. I want to stop immigrants from freely crossing our borders but to fire two employees (who could be US citizens) from speaking spanish to eachother is ridiculous.. I can live with requiring your workers to speak english when around customers however to take it a step further is a political stunt.