The article I posted from today's Washington Times does not really provide any new information. The reporter basically copied what was in Senator Alexander's press release.
The EEOC took on the Salvation Army case because sorting clothes doesn't require speaking English.
"These women had worked at the location for five years sorting donations without any complaints about their conversing in Spanish," EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru said at a commission meeting earlier this year.
In other cases, the agency has defended workers who complained they weren't allowed to speak their native languages while on their lunch break or in telephone conversations with their spouses.
English-only lawsuits are in fact brought only rarely, the EEOC says. The agency averages just five lawsuits a year for all language-related discrimination issues. The Salvation Army case filed in April is the most recent English-only suit filed. English-only complaints accounted for less than 0.2 percent of all those filed with the agency last year.
In the case explained by dyslexia, speaking Spanish while sorting clothes actually made the workers more effective since they were working together.
The ridiculous part of the conservative rhetoric is the word "Unity".
This is a very divisive piece of legislation that is deeply offensive to many Americans.
well, it's pretty obvious to me that foxfyre thinks that what this country needs is more laws to solve our social problem issues. pretty unusual for a libertarian even one with a small "L".
I was just catching up on this thread, and the ignorance of the entire concept of civil rights displayed by Foxy's posts is astounding.
Foxfyre wrote:
How can you discriminate against anybody if you treat everybody exactly the same? So long as a policy is applied consistently and uniformly, it is impossible to discriminate.
This kind of statement would be funny if it weren't a justification to continue discriminatory practices.
ebrown_p wrote:I was just catching up on this thread, and the ignorance of the entire concept of civil rights displayed by Foxy's posts is astounding.
Foxfyre wrote:
How can you discriminate against anybody if you treat everybody exactly the same? So long as a policy is applied consistently and uniformly, it is impossible to discriminate.
This kind of statement would be funny if it weren't a justification to continue discriminatory practices.
Imagine an employer introducing an "everybody working here has to be married" policy. It would be applied consistently and uniformly.
It could be called "Protecting Marriage in the Workplace Act of 2007."
An important impact of the Civil Rights Acts is a guarantee that people who are Jewish can have a guarantee of being able to take the high holidays off.
This was a real way that minorities were discriminated against in the past.
Foxfyre would have it that as long as Christians couldn't take time off for Yom Kippur (or any other holiday that is not celebrated by the majority as Christmas and Easter are) then it should be fair that Jewish people couldn't take it off either.
((I wonder if Foxfyre would support a "Protecting Christians in the Workplace act" that would address this issue))
Well, I'm not entirely sure if Foxfyre was making the point in defense of workplace policies in general.
Let's note that the EEOC position seems to be that an English-only policy is legal as long as it prohibits not just a few selected languages, but all of the foreign languages spoken in a workplace (assuming "business necessity" of such a policy).
In that context, it would make sense to say that a policy that would treat everybody exactly the same would not be discriminatory.
Now, the bit about "So long as a policy is applied consistently and uniformly, it is impossible to discriminate" is a bit more dubious...
Then what? Kick out the people who don't speak it well?
That was an interesting thread...
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