Nursing Home Assailed Over Language Policy : Complaint: Union official accuses facility of bias after he is barred for speaking Tagalog. Home limits workers to ‘majority’ language in presence of patients.

A union representative who was banned from an Orange County nursing home for speaking the Filipino language Tagalog has filed a complaint with federal labor authorities.

The Hospital and Service Employees’ Union Local 399 filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board this month against the Hillhaven Convalescent Hospital in Orange, charging discrimination based on national origin.

The complaint was filed on behalf of Gabriel Espiritu, 46, of Glassell Park. On Saturday, about 30 people, including Hillhaven employees and their union representatives, staged a protest at the Orange home in opposition of the company’s language policy.

In filing their complaint, union attorneys said they hope to persuade the Hillhaven Corp.--a Tacoma, Wash., company that owns the Orange facility as well as thousands of other nursing homes nationwide--to change a policy that requires English or the “majority” language of most patients to be spoken in any area where patients might overhear.

In an affidavit filed last week, Espiritu, who is Filipino, describes how he was told by a Filipina nurse not to speak Tagalog after he addressed her in their native language during a Jan. 23 visit to the facility to introduce himself to union members.

Espiritu said that when he passed the nurse some time later, he again tried to speak to her in Tagalog, but she ordered him not to in a raised voice. He reported the incident to the hospital’s administrator the next day and was told the nurse was right--he was not allowed to speak Tagalog.

When the union business representative returned to the facility Feb. 1 to pick up ballots, the administrator threatened to call police unless he left immediately, Espiritu said. When he tried to leave a few minutes later, he said, police stopped him outside the hospital and he was cited for trespassing.

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Hillhaven spokesman Mark Timmerman said Espiritu showed a lack of concern for the facility’s language policy.

“This is a case of someone who didn’t care about the rules,” Timmerman said. “This individual just stood there and declared he would speak any language he wanted to, regardless of the rules.”

Espiritu denied making such a remark and said the administrator forced him to sit on the ground for almost three hours under “citizen’s arrest” while police questioned both of them.

“It was humiliating, having this happen to me while I was on the job, in front of all the workers I represent,” said Espiritu, who also is a graduate student at UCLA.

Two days later, representatives from the nursing home unsuccessfully tried to obtain a restraining order from the Orange County Superior Court barring Espiritu from the premises. On Saturday afternoon, as placard-wielding protesters picketed the Orange facility, the administrator of Hillhaven was inside offering pizzas to workers as part of an employee recognition day.

“We thought we needed to do something like this to pick up spirits for the employees,” said administrator Charlotte Dufresne. She said the protest is one of many tactics used by the union to further its causes during negotiations, which have been ongoing since September.

“This is an unfortunate situation,” she said. “Our policy is not anti-immigrant. We are simply concerned with protecting the rights of our residents.”

Protester Joe Navidad, coordinator of a support group for Filipinos called PESANTE, said, “This is crazy. We should not be harassed for speaking our native language.”

Espiritu’s is the most recent language-related complaint filed against a Hillhaven facility in California. Trouble with bilingual employees began after the company adopted its current language policy for the Western region in mid-1993. The rule states that the language spoken in a facility must be that of the majority of its residents, and that employees may speak other languages only out of their earshot.

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A letter sent last June to all skilled nursing and intermediate care facilities statewide by the Department of Health Services stated: “Each resident has the right to be fully informed of his or her total health status, in a language that he or she understands. At the same time, all employees have the right to communicate with each other in their primary language when not engaged in direct communication with, or providing care to a resident.”

William Sokol, the lead attorney representing the union on Espiritu’s behalf, contends that Hillhaven’s ban on employees speaking their primary language within earshot of patients is a violation of the state guidelines.

But Timmerman says the policy is not intended to be discriminatory.

“We’re dealing with patients who are vulnerable emotionally as well as physically,” Timmerman said. “Basically, what we ask is that employees not speak a foreign language around patients or where they can be overheard by patients.”

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.