http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Busin..._031211-1.html
Speaking in Tongues
As More Immigrants Enter Work Force, English-Only Rules Come Into Question
By Catherine Valenti
Dec. 11 — While she was working at cosmetics store Sephora in New York City's Rockefeller Center, Leydis Rodriguez says she was prohibited from speaking Spanish at all times.
"We were not allowed to speak our native language on the floor … and on our lunch break," she says.
Rodriguez and four other women all say they were told to speak English on the job, including during their breaks, and that managers frequently mimicked their speech and accents.
"I would feel really bad, angry at them, and discriminated [against]," says Mariela Del Rosario, one of the women filing the suit.
When the store closed in August of 2002, Rodriguez and two of the women who spoke out about the English-only rule say they were not offered positions anywhere else in the company, and lost their jobs.
Now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Sephora on behalf of the women for instituting an "English-only" rule, which the commission says violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a rule that prohibits discrimination against workers based on their national origin, among other factors.
(*See link for the rest of the article)
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One thing I found interesting in the article was a company that implemented an English-only rule because the owners found out that the employees were cursing or speaking about inappropriate subjects in a different language (in this case, Navajo) while on the job. While I think that prohibiting employees from speaking in another language while taking their breaks is taking things too far, if they're still on the premesis during their break, they're still representing the company, and the employer does have the right to restrict what they talk about, no matter what language it's in.
So, what are your thoughts? (I'm especially interested in the opinions of people who speak another language fluently.)
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