The Situation

The United States has always had a reputation as a melting pot of cultures – with a population made up of people from a great many countries, this has always been inevitable. However, one thing that was historically taken for granted was that the process of integration and inclusion for new immigrants would include learning, and using English as their primary language. At least in the workplace, it was expected that employees would learn to function in English.

 In recent years, the high volume of immigration from Hispanic countries has altered this situation somewhat. The high volumes of Spanish-speaking workers have inadvertently introduced Spanish to the workplace in many areas of the country. It has become a difficult issue to deal with for employers; they need to ensure that everyone in their workplace can effectively communicate with everyone else, but are unsure as to how they can achieve this without discriminating or reducing effectiveness.

 In some cases, the issue is simply over whether bilingual employees should carry out all business in English. In other, more problematic cases, recent immigrants' poor educational backgrounds mean that their English is limited or non-existent and they find it hard to rapidly learn this new language. This can leave supervisory staff, speaking only English, unable to effectively communicate with their workers – frustrating, unproductive and sometimes dangerous.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded that in 2000, there was a 2% overall reduction in workplace fatalities, while at the same time there was an 11.6% increase in workplace fatalities amongst Hispanic workers. It's hard to conclude that language was not a contributing factor here, given that some of the most dangerous working environments are also those where low-paid Latino immigrant workers often start their working lives in America.

As an indication of the scale of this issue, it's estimated that in some states, such as California, as many as two-fifths of workers speak English as a second language. Many employers have felt the need to take action to manage the use of multiple languages in their workplace.

The Law

Some companies have not had to deal with an inability to communicate, only with employees using more than one language when speaking to each other – for example, bilingual native Spanish speakers choosing to speak to each other in Spanish, rather than English.

In many cases this is not a problem, but some employers do take exception to this and have tried to regulate it, sometimes running foul of Civil Rights law in the process. While it is generally considered legally acceptable for employers to require that their business be carried out in English, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunities Commission) generally does not accept as reasonable instances where employers seek to ban employees from using any other language at all – for example when socializing during a rest period. The EEOC classes this as discrimination on the basis of country of origin, which is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 1964, and employers attempting to implement such a policy have been successfully prosecuted.

Lifelong Learning

Some employers have taken a different approach, and have provided access to language tuition. In most cases this takes the form of English language tuition for workers whose English is restricted, but some employers, particularly those in high-turnover industries such as catering, have encouraged their supervisory staff to learn some Spanish, on the basis that management staff tend to be retained by employers for much longer, and so training them is more cost-effective and practical.

In both cases, language tuition has been widely-found to help both productivity and employee-employer relations, and is becoming more and more widespread in areas with sizeable Latino populations.

Conclusions

English in the workplace is a thorny issue for some American employers, but experience shows often all that is required to smooth over any difficulties is a reasonable approach and a little investment in training – easily paid back in goodwill and improved productivity.