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Posted on 10/01/2002 6:05:09 PM PDT by Selmo
Navajo lawsuit targets English-only work rule
Feds back tribe in 'historic' act
A small, family-owned burger grill in Page, a border town to the Navajo Nation, has become the first business to be sued by the federal government for not allowing Native Americans to speak their own language at work.
The suit, announced Monday, is the first time the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed an English-only lawsuit based on a Native American language rather than Spanish, said Mary Jo O'Neill, acting regional attorney for the agency's Phoenix office.
"It's historic," O'Neill said. "Obviously, Navajo was spoken in this area before English was."
Meanwhile, two Phoenix employers also are being sued by the EEOC for refusing to allow a Muslim worker to cover her head and for denying another worker time to pray.
On one side of the language suit are four Native American women who say the "English-only" work rule evoked memories of government efforts to eradicate their language. On the other is a mom-and-pop restaurant, which claims it used the EEOC's own guidelines to establish a conflict-free workplace.
The center of the storm is RD's Drive-In, where most of the employees and many of the customers are Navajo. Steve Kidman said the drive-in was started by his father, Richard, 25 years ago. The two run it together now.
According to Kidman, some of the employees who spoke Navajo were talking about other employees in Navajo, making them so uncomfortable that they were threatening to quit. And, he said, customers told him they could hear employees swearing in Navajo in the kitchen.
So he and his dad got on the EEOC Web site in June 2000 and looked at the guidelines for an "English-only" workplace, wrote their policy, posted it and asked all his employees to sign it.
According to the EEOC, it said: "The owner of this business can speak and understand only English. While the owner is paying you as an employee, you are required to use English at all times. The only exception is when the customer cannot understand English. If you feel unable to comply with this requirement, you may find another job."
David Lopez, the EEOC's trial attorney on the case, said the policy didn't allow employees to speak Navajo even on their own time, during breaks or at lunchtime. And that those who didn't sign the policy were terminated. That makes the policy illegal, Lopez said.
Elva Josley, formerly Begay, one of the employees who spoke Navajo, said she got scared and told Kidman she wouldn't sign the policy. He told her to clock out and go home, she said.
"I thought it was unfair," Josley said. "Our whole crew was Navajo. And some things are better said in Navajo . . . they make more sense."
She said she never heard any employee say anything derogatory or vulgar in Navajo.
Kidman says he didn't fire anyone, that they quit. And, he says, when the EEOC told him his policy was discriminatory, he sent them certified letters saying they could have their jobs back. No one came back.
"It's a complicated legal issue, one that courts have differed over," said David Selden, the Kidmans' attorney. "Even federal judges with all of their resources, skills and training, disagree. And they are expecting a small mom-and-pop drive-in up in Page to figure out this complicated and evolving area of the law. And you do so at the peril of the EEOC suing you."
In the religious discrimination suits, the EEOC filed two separate lawsuits against Cannon & Wendt Electric Co. and Alamo Rent A Car for religious discrimination.
The EEOC says in one that Alamo allowed Bilan Nur, then 20, to cover her head during observance of the monthlong Ramadan in 1999 and 2000. But a year later, after the attack on the World Trade Center, she was fired for violating company dress codes, the suit says. When Nur, a customer service representative, was dismissed, she was wearing a regulation Alamo head scarf, the suit says.
Alan Katz, an Alamo spokesman in New York, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
In the second suit, against Cannon & Wendt, the EEOC alleges the company had accommodated Larry Walker's religion when he worked as a union apprentice electrician in 1999 and 2000. But in April 2001, the company refused to hire him to work at a site in Phoenix after he reminded them that he needed time to observe his faith.
Walker, 28, asked for 15 minutes each day to pray and 45 minutes during his lunch hour each Friday to attend a Jumah, a congregation of prayer at his mosque. Walker requested unpaid leave and said he would make up lost time during overtime hours.
Cannon & Wendt refused to hire him because it would have to honor similar requests from others, the suit says.
Cannon & Wendt officials did not return calls for comment on Friday or Monday.
Custer had it coming!
kj
Dear President,
Please clean out the EEOC.
Thanks in advance,
Freeper Meyer
The Kidmans' are screwed. They admitted guilt, with this action.
How, exactly, were the Navajos adversely affecting business by speaking Navajo? It sounds like most customers, on an Indian reservation, were Navajo.
The same with Alamo. They let the woman wear the head scarf for two years, then, all of a sudden, she couldn't?
If the guy who wants to pray wants to pray, let him do it on his own time. Requiring an employer to afford time to someone who wants to take a break to pray would require him to do that for Catholics on Holy Days, and for anybody else who had a religious excuse.
Feds say something? Run like hell.
Smart people.
z
We promise....
LOL..
It's not his fault, right?. We need a Republican Senate.
If that happens, the excuse will be "we don't have 60 votes to stop a filibuster".
Not in hamburger drive-ins though. It seems the owners can't really say what happens at their business, it's like the government owns everything. Wait till the Mexicans arrive and insist that everything be in Spanish ---then which side does the government take?
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