[lg policy] Baltimore: Fired for Speaking a Single Word of Another Language?

[Harold Schiffman]

Fired for Speaking a Single Word of Another Language?
by Alex DiBranco June 29, 2010 10:08 AM (PT)

Many hospitals feel the urge to impose an English-only policy in the
Emergency Room. Life-or-death situation, everybody needs to be on the
same page, all that jazz. The policy seems somewhat unnecessary, since
common sense should dictate that people will communicate in an
intelligible language in such high-risk jobs, but I'm not going to
pick apart hospital policy that seems to have a rational grounding. On
the other hand, I do take issue with the utterly ridiculous firing of
a group of nurses for speaking another language during their lunch
break.

"Pass the salt" is hardly a communication that somebody's life depends
on, so if a group of Filipina nurses wants to speak Tagalog over
sandwiches, how about everybody else mind their own business? If they
want a non-Tagalog speaker to pass them the salt, I'm sure they'll put
the request in English. I fail to see what rationale basis this
provides for firing, nor who is harmed by hearing another language
with a cool name like "Tagalog" spoken.

Yet the Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore City seems to feel that
overhearing hard-working nurses shooting the breeze in another
language while on break is grounds for immediate termination. The
hospital offered no critique of performance, just outrage at hearing
non-English words spoken. A secretary who was also fired never
imagined that she would get in trouble for exchanging words in her
native tongue, since her work has nothing to do with patient medical
care. In fact, she's not sure what word, exactly, she was fired for,
but thinks it might have been calling a Filipino doctor "Kuya"
("Sir").

That's right: the hospital's policy is so vague, speaking a single
word in Tagalog (or any other language besides English) is enough to
set off the firing of an otherwise exemplary staffer. For the sudden
terminations in question, the hospital has been unable to provide
documentation of when the language faux pas took place, which suggests
that anybody could be let go on extremely shaky grounds, perhaps just
on a ruse to get rid of immigrant staff. This is discrimination and
xenophobia, plain and simple, and it raises questions about whether
the broader English-only policy was truly implemented to assure better
patient care, or whether that was just a ruse for an anti-immigrant
practice.

The hospital staff have fired a complaint with the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for discriminatory violation of their
basic rights and lack of due process. In a similar case from 2005 in
which the EEOC ruled that discrimination had taken place, a group of
Hispanic housekeepers were sanctioned for saying "hasta la vista" as a
goodbye. Seriously? Spanish is not Arnold Schwarzenegger's first
language, but that's his big movie catch phrase. Are foreign languages
so ugly to American ears? (I'm reminded of the spoof video of an
Alabama gubernatorial campaign ad: "When I'm governor, Juan's Taqueria
will become John's Flour Bread Sandwiches.")

English is my first language, but I drop in words and phrases from
other languages from time to time. Virtually everybody does, since so
many foreign words have become a part of our everyday "American." Ever
said "ciao"? That's Italian, my friend. Whoops — and "faux pas" is
French, so I've already used another language in this post. It's time
to cut the English-only xenophobia; not even the English language
itself is truly English-only.

Hasta la vista, amigos.

http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/fired_for_speaking_a_single_word_of_another_language

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