This immigrant question is not as easy as ABC: Can employers require employees to speak English?
A Southern California tree nursery company recently filed a lawsuit, saying that California discriminates against workers who do not speak English because the state doesn’t offer tests in other languages. GroWest officials claimed that their only crane operator, who has been their employee for 24 years, failed the mandatory test to get a Certification for Crane Operators because it was in English. Company officials said that had the test been given in Spanish, their employee would have passed it.
“The issue doesn’t have anything to do with discriminating against people who do not speak English, but everything to do with safety,” said Graham Brent, executive director of the state commission that produces the test.
There are two points of view on this issue. A group calling itself “ProEnglish in the Workplace” pushes for the English requirement, as expected, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says that English-workplace policies are discriminatory, and thus illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
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