Typical….sheesh

Makes me wonder, reading this and the link below, about ballots for elections being printed in English or Spanish or both?

http://hoosieraccess.com/blog/2008/04/11/cant-speak-english-but-shes-voting-for-hillary/

A person can’t be fired for speaking Spanish because that would imply etnic discrimination. Yet a person can be fired for speaking English?

One of those supervisors should challenge this in court.

We speak English in the USA!

Join us and speak our English language in this vast land of freedom!
Otherwise, get the hell out of our country.

How interesting. The news item is almost two years old - it was a news story in June 2006.

Phil:

The firefighters weren’t being fired for speaking English. The Oregon Department of Forestry established a bilingual requirement in 2003 after a devastating fire season in 2002 led to relying on Hispanic firefighters, many of whom did not speak English or spoke very little.

The Oregon department failed to enforce the policy for a couple of years and then decided to do so, obviously leading to the news item in 2006.

Companies often require bilingualism as a job criteria if it is necessary to do business.

Charlotte,

The workers should have been required to learn English, then the problem would not have occurred. I think my point that the state of Oregon somehow thinks it is too much to ask of these workers to learn English, but it is okay to ask others to learn Spanish is valid.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages spoken in this world. To require someone to speak all of them (which is what this decision effectively does) is ridiculous.

Phil:

According to the articles on the issue, the state didn’t have time to make speaking English a condition of employment.

If you go out to the internet to research it, the state of Oregon had a disastrous fire season in 2002 and had to hire workers quickly. They were forced to take firefighters they could find. Many of those were Hispanic and had few, if any, English skills.

The state established the bilingual requirement in 2003, but the problem arose when the state failed to follow through with its own requirement.

In an emergency, Oregon decided it was more critical to have people to fight fires than to have an all-English speaking workforce. The state made that decision to fill its depleted firefighting squads.

You miss my point - the state didn’t force anyone to learn Spanish - it established that as a requirement to be hired as a team leader. The state failed to follow through with its own criteria which led to the situation.

If Oregon had followed its established criteria of hiring bilingual team leaders, this would not have happened, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

As I noted, numerous companies have a bilingual requirement when they do business. I also don’t believe, according to the information I found, that the bilingual requirement required speaking hundreds of languages - it was limited to Spanish and English.

And, finally, since this piece of “news” is almost two years old, the issue has probably been resolved.

Charlotte, I was only responding to the news segment provided, not knowing how dated it was. Regardless, there was still a point to be made.

The newscaster said that the crew leaders needed to speak the language of the workers, even if it’s only one person on the crew. Granted, this story was only talking about Spanish speakers, but the rule establishes the precedent that it is the English speaking supervisors who are forced to accomodate, rather than the non-English speaking workers. I find that to be ridiculous, whether it is one or a hundered languages.

Yes, businesses often require bi-lingualism of their employees, but that is when the customer’s needs (not the employees) dictate such. If this was truely a temporary situation, then the emergency conditions would warrant doing whatever would provide the most firefighters at the time. But if it was only temporary, I don’t think the supervisors would have been laid off or fired.

It is a serious issue when people in this country can not understand English. They have created a sometimes dangerous communication barrier for themselves and others. It also likely points to illegal immigration. If not illegal, then definitely irresponsible. If you are going to migrate to another country, you should learn the language spoken there.

Phil:

If this was an emergency situation as the internet reports indicate, then Oregon took emergency action. They were forced to use non-English speaking workers at that time.

I have not researched to see if this is still the policy. It could be that this emergency situation no longer exists. Also, wouldn’t being able to save lives and property be a sufficient reason to establish a bilingual requirement?

While the requirement wasn’t being established to serve customers, it was established to provide sufficient firefighters to save lives and property.

Charlotte, Do you mean to tell me unemployment is so low in Oregon there were no English speaking applicants that applied for the firefighter positions?

Forgive my skepticism, but I find that hard to believe. My guess is political correctness far out weighed the lack of able bodied applicants. The population of Oregon is 2nd only to California when it comes to catering to politically correct horseshit.