Recently in my fair city of Rochester, NY, eight city workers filed suit against city government because their supervisor told them they were no longer allowed to speak Spanish on the job.

Local television news interviewed three of the eight employees, who work in the city’s maintenance department. According to the report I watched, they are not suing for damages. They simply want what appears to be an unwritten policy and an environment of harassment created by their immediate supervisor to be renounced by city government, and they would like an apology. Some of the men interviewed are perfectly fluent in English, so this does not appear to be a case of individuals who have limited English proficiency or who are advocating for Spanish as their primary language at work.

Based on both television and newspaper reports that I have seen, the employees in question were speaking Spanish among themselves during breaks. They did not insist on using Spanish when interacting with English-speaking co-workers. It appears to me to be the misguided use of authority by their immediate supervisor. If there is any malfeasance on part of Rochester city government, it arises from not addressing the issue directly and firmly when the Spanish-speaking employees formally complained previously.

There are a few things that have caught my attention about this story…

• Reading the comments posted to the article on the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle website, you will see some visceral reaction by readers. Most are against the use of any language other than English in the workplace, even if the conversations in another language are not about work. Other advocate the policy of English Only for the USA.
• Many readers who posted comments rely on vicious stereotypes that contradict the reported facts. I take for granted, since I’m in the language industry, that most individuals understand how natural it is to revert to one’s native language when in the company of individuals who speak it. This is not the case; many of the comments reflect a truly jingoistic tone about being “American” and how “English is our only language”. Even immigrants who struggled to learn English found it “wrong” that the city workers were speaking Spanish on the job, implying that they were too lazy or uneducated. For the most part, I was pretty shocked by the comments and the underlying prejudice they conveyed.

Despite the negativity, I do understand the impact that language can have on the workplace. Recently, my wife, who is a physical therapist, was in the presence of two Ukrainian-speaking secretaries, who spoke their native language in her presence while she was filing paperwork. She asked my opinion as to whether or not this was rude. I couldn’t offer a cut-and-dry answer. I think it’s much like cell phones. It can be annoying to be in the presence of someone speaking on their cell phone in public because we are wired to hear both parts of a conversation. And when overhearing a conversation in a language we don’t understand, our brain is tuning in to try to comprehend, but with no success. If you mix in some laughter between the two speakers, our egos may jump in and think it’s in reference to us. I think this is what was going on with the Rochester maintenance workers and their supervisor. He or she may have been frustrated because of feeling excluded.

What critics of the maintenance workers must understand is that language is one of the factors that bind communities, cultures and whole nations together. For the maintenance workers it was perhaps a bit “clique-ish” to speak Spanish within earshot of the supervisor. Depending on the underlying relationship with him or her, perhaps it was done passive aggressively. I am only speculating. Regardless, no one has the right to tell others which language they may or may not speak when it does not relate directly to their jobs.

If view through a political lens, the most ironic aspect of this story is that many of the individuals who advocate for an English-Only approach to dealing with the issue of language, are the same people who believe in free markets. No market is freer than that of languages. People will speak their own languages. Whole nations have fought and died over the right. It’s time for many Americans to wake up: the melting pot is bigger and it has changed. America’s newest arrivals will speak English, but few will give up their mother tongues completely. In 1890, for immigrants to the U.S. English was the key to succeeding in their new land. In today’s global economy choosing monolingualism is a fool’s game. Those who are smart will learn English and maintain their native language and pass it along to their children. That’s how you succeed in a flat world.