Carlsbad Firm Scraps English Only on Job Rule
A federal lawsuit was dismissed this week after a Carlsbad manufacturing firm agreed to change an employee rule that required workers to use English on the job.
As a result of the lawsuit filed by Maria Mendez, a Mexican national with permanent resident status whose primary language is Spanish, workers at the Puritan-Bennett Corp. will generally be allowed to speak their native languages.
The new employee rule outlined in the settlement agreement is consistent with the “business necessity standard” dictated by both state and federal law, according to Betty Wheeler, Mendez’s lawyer and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
Employees at the medical respirator manufacturing plant may now speak the language of their choice while on the job, unless they are in a group meeting being monitored by a supervisor who does not understand the language, or in a group of employees whose only common language is English.
“It carves out much narrower circumstance where speaking English can be mandated and opens up a wide variety of other circumstances where other languages can be spoken.”
The company rule challenged by Mendez required all workers involved with building, designing and distributing the firm’s product “to communicate in English in the presence of any person whose only common language is English, while receiving training or giving instruction or while performing job duties.”
The company’s operations manual justified the rule by noting that the firm was regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and that errors in production could result in the loss of lives.
The complaint filed on behalf of Mendez said the rule failed to meet legal standards that allow restrictions on employee behavior only if there is an “overriding and legitimate” need to ensure safe and efficient business operations.
The new policy is much less restrictive, Wheeler said. “This policy provides for very narrowly circumscribed situations in which English can be required.”
