US Congress in Tiff Over English-Only Rules

[Harold Schiffman]

Congress in Tiff Over English-Only Rules
By ANDREW TAYLOR – 15 hours ago

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 30 years, 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.
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.
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. 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.

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 the EEOC 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. e 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://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iuCyvt9_27D_uJUNbU9M7oedAvcgD8SUCTSO0

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