13 Phone Operators Win Record $709,284 in English-Only Suit

Thirteen telephone operators--hired to handle collect calls from Mexico--have won a record $709,284 judgment against a Dallas-area company that fired them for refusing to abide by an English-only workplace rule, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday.

“We were actually speaking Spanish to get the money for that company, and then they didn’t allow us to speak Spanish even during lunchtime,” said Edgar Lira, 28, who along with his wife, Mardia, was fired by Premier Operator Services Inc. for refusing to sign the English-only agreement. They have since moved to San Diego, where they work as data entry clerks for an HMO.

Each of the 13 operators could receive back wages and $50,000, the maximum compensatory and punitive damages allowed in such a discrimination case. The total is the largest amount ever won by the EEOC in a lawsuit for English-only violations.

The operators may have trouble collecting, however. Premier filed for bankruptcy in December 1999 and did not present a case at the July trial.

According to the court ruling, Premier President Eric Brown, in a memo to fellow company officials, indicated that he intended to fraudulently transfer company assets to avoid any EEOC judgments.

Representatives of the company could not be reached for comment.

Lira said he hopes the ruling will encourage other workers in similar situations to take a stand.

“We’re not the only ones or the first ones that this kind of thing has happened to,” Lira said.

The federal magistrate ruled against Premier after hearing testimony from a University of Pittsburgh linguist that recent research shows that adhering to an English-only rule is not simply a matter of preference. Susan Berk-Seligson testified that “code switching,” an unconscious tendency to lapse into a native language, can not easily be turned off.

“You were required to speak Spanish to Spanish speakers who were customers,” said EEOC attorney Toby Wosk Costas. “The difficult part was when you would turn to your co-worker in a cubicle next to you who was a fellow Hispanic. You were expected to immediately convert to English, which, as our expert who testified said, is basically impossible. It was quite draconian.”

The record award follows a $192,500 settlement earlier this month for a suburban Chicago assembly-line worker, who was fired for saying “good day” in Spanish, and eight others dismissed or disciplined for violating that company’s English-only rule.

English-only discrimination cases have skyrocketed in the past four years, from 77 filings in 1996 to 365 so far this year, according to the EEOC.

The judgment “sends a message that it makes no sense from either a business standpoint, an employee relations standpoint or a civil rights standpoint to impose rules against the speaking of an individual’s primary language at work, especially when that rule has no business justification and covers personal time,” Costas said.

Joe Posner, an Encino lawyer who heads the Los Angeles chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Assn., said legal opinions allow employers to impose English-only rules where there is a reason, such as talking to English-speaking customers or issuing orders in a hospital emergency room.

“Absent a necessity for it, the cases say you can speak whatever language you speak,” Posner said.

The DeSoto, Texas, long-distance operator service required its employees to speak Spanish, testing their competency before hiring, in order to handle calls from Spanish-speaking customers. When the company asked employees to sign an English-only workplace policy in January 1996, six refused and were fired, Costas said.

“The policy prohibited the speaking of Spanish at all times, including the time during free moments operators had between calls, during lunch, in the employee break room, when making personal telephone calls, and before and after work if inside the building,” Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney said in his ruling. “Under defendant’s policy, the only time it was acceptable to speak Spanish was when assisting a Spanish-speaking customer.”

Two operators who signed under protest were fired in February 1996, within 24 hours of the company’s notice of their discrimination complaint, and the others were let go by the end of March of that year, Castro said. Non-Latinos were subsequently hired.