WASHINGTON – A government lawsuit against the Salvation Army has the House and Senate at loggerheads over whether to nullify a law that prohibits employers from firing people who don't speak English on the job.
Republicans are pushing hard to protect employers who require workers to speak English, but Democratic leaders have blocked the move despite narrow vote tallies in the GOP's favor.
For more than 30 years, federal rules have generally barred employers from establishing English-only requirements for their workers. But Senate Republicans have passed legislation preventing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from enforcing the rules.
House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, have promised Latino lawmakers that the language issue is a nonstarter and the resulting impasse has stalled the underlying budget bill, which lawmakers had hoped to send to President Bush this week.
The EEOC has come under assault from lawmakers such as Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., after the agency filed suit earlier this year against a Salvation Army thrift store in Massachusetts that had fired two Hispanic employees for speaking Spanish while sorting clothes.
Supporters of the EEOC regulation – which can be waived if there is a legitimate business or safety purpose to require English – say it protects workers from discrimination based on national origin, which is barred under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe-shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,' ” Alexander said yesterday.
“You can have English-only rules . . . if in fact that English-only rule is relevant to job performance, safety, efficiency and so on,” countered Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas.
The EEOC took on the Salvation Army case because sorting clothes doesn't require speaking English.
