Taking an action increasingly sought by immigrant groups, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took a suburban Chicago manufacturer to court on Thursday, challenging its “English-only” on-the-job rule for workers.
In its federal lawsuit, the agency said that Watlow Batavia Inc., a subsidiary of Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co. of St. Louis, violated workers’ civil rights by barring them from speaking Spanish at any time during working hours.
The company declared an “English-only” policy in August 1997, saying workers could converse only in English while at work at the small plant that builds aluminum radiators and other products. Within days of the announcement, Watlow fired four employees for speaking Spanish on the job, and eventually three others were disciplined, said Jose J. Behar, an EEOC attorney.
After workers complained, the agency attempted to resolve the dispute with the company but could not reach an agreement, said John P. Rowe, head of the EEOC’s Chicago district office.
Edward Jepson, an attorney in Chicago for the company, declined to comment on the case, and company officials in St. Louis could not be reached for a reaction. The suit seeks an injunction to prevent the company from enforcing the rule; affected employees also could receive up to $300,000 in punitive damages plus back pay for those who were fired.
Stirred by a tide of complaints, led largely by Latino and Asian groups, the EEOC decided in 1996 to put a high priority on cases where workers charge they have been discriminated against because of English-only policies, Rowe said.
From 77 such complaints filed against employers in 1996, the agency stepped up its activity to 140 complaints in 1997 and 146 complaints last year. “Often, English-only rules are manifestations of prejudice toward ethnic minorities,” said John C. Hendrickson, the EEOC’s regional attorney in Chicago.
In the Watlow case, for example, Hendrickson said the EEOC could not see any reason why employees, who mostly work by themselves, should be barred from speaking Spanish. “This looks like, `We don’t want to hear a word out of your mouth if it is not English,’ ” he said.
EEOC officials said taking action is especially important in Chicago, which attracts immirants and boasts a workforce of people whose mother tongues are of lands circling the globe.
The problem, Hendrickson said, is that “they (employers) are attempting to homogenize the workplace automatically.”
But asserting workers’ rights to resist English-only rules is a battleground where the EEOC and immigrant and other groups face major challenges.
Businesses are not barred by federal law from demanding that workers speak only English.
But they are required under an EEOC regulation to show that such a rule is necessary to do business–as in coordinating medical care, for example–and is not too sweeping.
In most cases, employers prevail, said Christine Godsil Cooper, a labor law expert at Loyola University Law School.
“Employers usually say they need to be able to maintain order in the workplace,” explained Martin Malin, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Still, the EEOC has won several cases against employers, as have workers against their bosses in the courts.
Four years ago, the federal agency was able to persuade the American Red Cross to stop an English-only rule at two laboratories in Rockville, Md. It had barred Chinese-speaking workers from using Chinese to chat on the job or when talking with relatives on the phone.
But backers of English-only rules won a major victory when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in July 1993 upheld a California firm’s ban on other languages in the workplace. The court pointed out its disagreement with the EEOC’s view.
The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on the case in 1994, leaving the issue up for more court battles.
In January, the EEOC won a victory, however, in federal court in Chicago. That’s when Judge Milton I. Shadur ruled that Synchro-Start Products Inc., a small manufacturing company in Niles with about 200 workers, had wrongfully implemented an English-only rule in September 1997 for its workers.
Most of the workers, the judge noted, have Polish or Hispanic origins. Citing the EEOC regulation, the judge said that such a rule creates an “atmosphere of inferiority, isolation and intimidation.”
To Juan Figueroa, an attorney and the president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, the drive for English-only rules “is nothing more than discrimination against Hispanics.”
“It is driven by their fear of our numbers, and our power. They are not questioning whether people can speak French or Russian on the job,” he said.
Because of the legal uncertainties, some groups are hesitant, however, about raising legal challenges to employers.
Patricia Mendoza, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Chicago, said that is true for her group, which regularly receives complaints from workers, asking what can be done about English-only rules.
In some cases, they are able to negotiate a solution, she said, citing a Chicago hospital that recently agreed to rescind an English-only rule.
“They realized how stupid it was,” she said.
