When Edgar and Mardia Lira reported to work at Premier Operator Services in DeSoto one January day, their supervisor wanted to talk.
She asked the Liras to sign a policy requiring that they speak only English on company premises, except when addressing Spanish-speaking customers. The Liras, bilingual natives of Mexico who worked as telephone operators, took offense.
"If I try to talk to my wife, on my break time, and they think that's against the company? I felt it was something against my dignity," said Mr. Lira, 26.
What happened next is in dispute. Mr. Lira says an angry Eric Brown, Premier's president, told them to sign or leave the premises. They left.
Mr. Brown, who says the English-only policy was intended to prevent Hispanic employees from making derogatory remarks about co-workers in Spanish, tells the story differently. The Liras weren't offenders, he conceded. But Mr. Brown he says he never fired anyone; the couple left of their own accord.
Mr. Brown tells the story differently. The Liras weren't offenders, he conceded. But Mr. Brown he says he never fired anyone; the couple left of their own accord. He says the English-only policy was intended to prevent Hispanic employees from making derogatory remarks about co-workers in Spanish.
Two years later, the controversy is in court - the latest in a spate of language-related job discrimination suits erupting across the country as workforces become more diverse. At issue are questions of when requiring English makes legal and business sense - and when an English-only requirement is discriminatory.
There's virtually no disagreement that it makes sense to mandate English for customer service workers who deal directly with English speakers or for safety reasons. Battle lines are typically drawn over requiring that English be spoken during informal conversations and on breaks.
"When you're dealing with an English-speaking public, working in groups or teams in an operating room, a chemistry lab or an oil rig ... those are examples of pretty uncontroversial English-only," said Edward Chen, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco.
"The rules that come up all the time [in civil rights complaints] are rules that cover casual conversation," he said. "And those, I think, are hard to justify."
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has filed suit against Premier on behalf of the Liras and 10 other former employees, contends that the firm's broad policy was illegal, which Premier denies.
EEOC guidelines say English-only policies must be justified by business necessity.
"If the issue was somebody being discourteous or rude, the way that should be managed is to address it with the individuals involved, not to pass a blanket policy that affects a lot of innocent, hard-working people who aren't involved," said Robert Canino, senior trial attorney with the EEOC in Dallas.
Courts haven't always agreed on these cases. Many observers believe the issue will eventually go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ACLU in San Francisco, for example, lost a case before the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also questioned the legal basis for the EEOC's guidelines on English-only.
Requiring bilingual employees of Spun Steak Co. to speak only English at work didn't impose an undue hardship, the court said in a 1993 decision. The company didn't require English of cleanup employees who spoke only Spanish. Nor did its English-only policy apply to workers on break.
The 5th Circuit appeals court, which sets precedent in Texas, upheld an employer's English-only rule in a 1980 decision. That policy didn't apply to breaks, and the court found a business necessity for the rule. Still, Michael Maslanka, a Dallas lawyer who represents employers, said he doubted whether a 1990s jury would find for the company, which fired a bilingual employee for responding in Spanish to a co-worker's question.
More recently, a federal jury in New York last February awarded $500,000 in back pay and damages to a saleswoman for Baccarat Inc. who alleged that she was fired because a new boss didn't like her speaking in Spanish unless a customer initiated the conversation. Baccarat, a crystal makermanufacturer, is appealing.
English-only disputes aren't numerous compared with other types of job discrimination complaints, but they're persistent. The EEOC reported 71 discrimination charges involving the policies in 1997, up from 32 in 1996. The New York-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund was involved withtook part in five suits involving English-only rules during the last year, said Juan Figueroa, the group's president and general counsel.
The policies are an outgrowth of general uneasiness over immigration, said James Crawford, author of Hold Your Tongue: Bilingualism and the Politics of English Only.
"Language is something people can understand, so it becomes a symbol for all the unsettling changes going on," Mr. Crawford said. "Sometimes people lash out with these policies, trying to suppress the differences, which usually doesn't work out very well."
Americans have historically distrusted speakers of other languages at the same time that they've admired multilingualism, said Mr. Chen, the ACLU lawyer.
"It's a very American sort of response to think that people speaking another language must be conspiring. The reaction is that 'they must be talking about me,"' Mr. Chen said.
That feeling resulted in a backlash against Italian and Polish-Catholic immigrants at the turn of the last century, he said.
Nonsense, said Jim Boulet Jr., executive director of English First, a Virginia-based lobbying group that is pushing to establish English as the official language of the United States. Mr. Boulet blames the rise in lawsuits on increased litigiousness by the EEOC and advocacy groups.
"Our policy is that an employer has the right to a one-language-in-the-workplace policy, no matter what that language might be," Mr. Boulet said. Safety and effective supervision are two reasons why an employer might choose to establish such a policy, he said.
But the most important, he said, is that "an employer is required not to have a hostile working environment."
"If the EEOC prevails, then an employer is going to have to not tolerate abusive language in the workplace, even if he doesn't understand the language being used."
The recent spate of litigation is an attempt by the federal agency to reignite an issue that failed to catch on two decades ago, Mr. Boulet said.
"While they're responsible for discrimination on the basis of national origin, language is not national origin."
"It's kind of like going to the county fair and trying to win one of the big teddy bears. You keep pitching until you win," he said.
Try telling Mr. Figueroa of the Puerto Rican group that language isn't about national origin.
"Spanish is closely and inseparably linked to national identity," he said."The politics of language are as much a defining issue for this country as it moves ahead as is affirmative action and some of the issues traditionally associated with African-Americans."
The controversy is also about race, Mr. Figueroa said. "Let's look at the majority of Spanish speakers. ... They are Mexican-American, Puerto Ricans or Cubans, highly mixed with either African or Indian races - people of color."
But Alicia Serret, a multilingual supervisor at Premier, which provides operator services for long-distance carriers, said she views speaking English on the job as a matter of courtesy.
"I think it's a matter of being respectful. That's the main thing," said Ms. Serret, who believes that forcing herself to speak English helped her learn the language faster.
Mr. Brown's English-only policy was aimed at protecting a few younger operators who didn't speak Spanish, he said.
"The problem only happened when we couldn't hire enough Spanish operators. We had to hire English operators, and some of the Spanish operators resented that, obviously," he said.
Bilingual supervisors heard slurs, Mr. Brown said. Still, he said, no one had to sign the English-only policy in order to continue working.
"I didn't fire anybody over the language policy. We just said no discrimination, no slander. If you must do that, find another job," Mr. Brown said.
Edgar Lira, who worked at Premier while attending Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, remembers Mr. Brown losing his temper after being told that the Liras refused to sign.
"Mr. Brown was very upset, very mad. He said, 'If you don't want to sign the memo, you take your things, the door is wide open,"' Mr. Lira said.
Such a statement, the EEOC's Mr. Canino said, is tantamount to firing.
Another employee, Albert Estrada, also disagreed with the policy. He signed, but wrote a note below his signature in protest.
Mr. Estrada, then 17 and a student at the Dallas Independent School District's law magnet, went to the EEOC.
Although Mr. Estrada grew up in the United States, he said his parents speak Spanish.
"Speaking Spanish is my culture," Mr. Estrada said.
In its suit, the EEOC charges that Mr. Estrada and others were fired on Feb. 29, 1996, the same day Mr. Brown received notice from the EEOC that his employees had filed charges.
"The law not only prohibits discrimination, it prohibits retaliation when someone comes forward to complain about something they think is unlawful," Mr. Canino said.
Mr. Brown contends that the action against Mr. Estrada had nothing to do with the charges but with his chronic tardiness. Mr. Brown also said Mr. Estrada wasn't really fired, just bumped to "on-call" status.
Furthermore, Mr. Brown said, the English-only policy at Premier Operator Services is no longer in force. It was dropped "after Mr. Estrada left and created all the ruckus," he said. Supervisors who once fielded calls themselves now do nothing but oversee the operators, Mr. Brown said.
"Once we went to that policy of someone doing active supervision, we do fine. It wasn't necessary anymore."
Mr. Brown nevertheless has declined an EEOC proposal to settle out of court because he says the facts are on his side.
"They weren't injured. They were paid for every hour they worked," he said."They left of their own choosing."
Mr. Estrada is equally adamant.
"If I believe in something, I'll follow it all the way. Until the end, or until I do my best," said Mr. Estrada, a full-time student at El Centro Community College who also works as purchasing supervisor for an automobile parts outlet.
At the EEOC, Mr. Canino said he doesn't expect English-only disputes to die.
"I suspect this issue to continue to surface and that at some point it may go to the Supreme Court. For all we know, this could be the case," he said.
PHOTO(S): (1-2 DMN: Randy Eli Grothe) 1. Albert Estrada, a
former employee at Premier Operator Services, is involved in a suit
against the company with 10 other former workers. Mr. Estrada
contends he was fired after filing charges with the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission over an English-only policy.
2. Eric Brown of Premier Operator Services in DeSoto, is being sued
by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which contends he
fired several Hispanic employees after they refused to sign an
English-only policy. Mr. Brown says he never fired anyone.
CHART(S): (DMN) English-Only Policies Under Fire Nationwide.
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