US Congress in Tiff Over English-Only Rules

[Harold Schiffman]

Congress in Tiff Over English-Only Rules
By ANDREW TAYLOR
November 15, 2007


WASHINGTON (AP) - 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 30years, federal rules have
generally barred employers from establishing English-only requirements
for their workers. But in a demonstration of the explosiveness of the
immigration issue, Senate Republicans have won passage of legislation
preventing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from enforcing
the rules against English-only workplaces.

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. TheEEOC 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.
The rules have their legal origin in 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.
CharlesGonzalez, 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 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.

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 Queens,N.Y., 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 theEEOC budget bill on an Appropriations Committee vote in June,
with the support of three Democrats - including powerful panel
Chairman 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 whip
members about 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."

http://usmexico.blogspot.com/2007/12/congress-in-tiff-over-english-only.html

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