My wife works for a Cafeteria located in a State building in California. She is one of three employee's. All three employee's speak fluent Cantonese (chinese). The employer recently hired a manager to oversea daily operations who mandated an English-only policy while on duty. The workers speak enough English to communicate with the customers, but choose to speak their home town dialect while speaking to each other. Has this issue been clearly defined in State/Federal law? Is this type of policy enforcible at the workplace? The manager is of African American decent and has complained that she can not understand what they are saying when they speak to each other. The manager has stated that she feels like she is being spoken down to or degraded in a language foreign to her.
Should my wife comply with the policy?

I would comply, until you find out if this is legal. I would contact EEOC or your Department of Labor for your state, if they can't answer the question, they can guide you to who can.

Under the law, the employer cannot prevent employees from speaking their own language in the workplace when they are not conducting business. It's fine to have an English-only policy as far as business is concerned, but it can't be enforced for non-business conversation.

Ah, the disappearing post again. *sigh*

Patty, what post disappeared?

I had responded to this one about 9 a.m. or so.

I lost one also earlier today (not this thread). Fortunately, it does not seem to happen very often, at least not on a percentage of posts basis.

What bothers me is that it's happening at all. Particularly since I frequently get blamed for deleting posts that I never even saw, let alone edited or deleted. But that's for another thread.

Don't worry about it. If not this, you would be blamed for something else. It all ends up the same.

Don't worry about it. If not this, you would be blamed for something else. It all ends up the same.

cbg never does anything wrong.

I know this for a fact....:)

DAW, you're probably right. ;)

SJ, you're a lamb. Thanks.:)

Sorry to hear that is happening! You guys are awesome with your responses, sorry I did not have the pleasure to read it! Hope all is ok, and thanks for the answers!

A couple of things that I mentioned in my disappearing post.

Although the company legally cannot prohibit the employees from speaking a language other than English for non-business communications, I wanted to recommend that these employees use this opportunity to work on their English skills. Also, I've been in situations like this before and, as an English-only speaker, it can be interpreted as rude when others speak in another language in front of you; paranoid or not, people can think they are speaking about them, or the employer can think they might be bad-mouthing the company.

Just something else to think about.

I agree, especially when speaking, they are looking over at someone. I do recall a time my sister and I were somewhere and two spanish guys were speaking their native language, NOT knowing my sister spoke fluent spanish. Yes, they were talking about us, and in a sexual way. You can only imagine what my sister said to them tee hee! Very shocked when they found she knew what was being said. Walked away very red. I also find it very rude, but legal *sigh*.