We Speak English Here, Do You?

Speak English, Nancy: Pelosi stiffs the Salvation Army

Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007

WHEN SHOULD it be illegal for a boss to require that employees speak English? If radical members of the U.S. House have their way, the answer will be almost always, if not always.

After the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the Salvation Army for firing two Hispanic employees in Framingham, Mass., earlier this year, the question has become a hot political topic.

The Salvation Army, which has an English-only policy, had given the women, and all employees, a year to learn English. The two, whose job was to sort clothes, refused. They were fired.

The EEOC called this discrimination. But that's nonsense.

According to the EEOC, businesses can adopt English-only policies only in certain circumstances, such as when employees directly interact with the public or for safety reasons.

That means that employers cannot insist that all employees speak the same language the boss, the police, firefighters and customers speak. This is absurd.

Unfortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't think so. Caving to the demands of radical Hispanic members of her own party, she is refusing to bring to a vote a Senate-passed provision relaxing federal rules on employer English-only policies.

That provision, sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., passed in the Senate 75-19. But Speaker Pelosi is going to kill it to please extremists Hispanics in the Democratic Party.

The federal government must not be able to force businesses to employ people who can't or won't speak English. That's just common sense. But common sense doesn't seem to be understood in Nancy Pelosi's office. Maybe if someone explained it to her in Spanish, she'd get it.

 

MY COMMENTARY

On the surface, I would say that this is probably discrimination on the part of the Salvation Army. However, is it really? Is it unreasonable to expect an employee who works for you to be able to speak the same language as you or as the majority of the other employees who work for you? Better yet, is it reasonable for the government to force you as an employer to have to learn another language or to make arrangements over and above a paycheck and benefits for someone who is not disabled in some way?

Another question I have is this: what makes anyone think that this will only apply to Hispanics? What about people who speak Mandarin Chinese? What about the Vietnamese? What about people who speak Arabic, Farsi, Persian, Hebrew, Russian, Greek, French, Japanese, Italian, German, Polish, Yiddish, Swahili or whatever other language anyone wants to speak? Where is their protection? See, that seems to be a major problem. How do we protect the rights of one group of people without infringing on the rights of another group? I'm not saying that the Salvation Army is not discriminating. I don't know that because I don't know their policy. What I am saying is that I believe that, if their policy dictates that their employees speak English while on the job, that they are within their rights as a business to make that rule. Another thing that I am saying is that Nancy Pelosi is one of the weakest politicians that I have ever heard of.