It’s All Double-Dutch, Scottish, Spanish, English and American

If there was one thing both me and Fox News have in common then it’s the ability to be fair and balanced.

In a wonky, pissed-up, ill-informed kind of way.

Still, that shouldn’t detract from a seemingly peculiar story doing the rounds about a sheet metal factory in Connecticut getting into bother over its English-only language policy that its entire workforce – including a good proportion of Spanish-only speakers – have been expected to follow to whichever letter of whichever alphabet. Although, I’m thinking English.

After a sheet metal plant in Connecticut ordered its employees to speak only English on the job because of safety concerns, five Spanish-speaking workers decided to take the company to court.

The employees, who are legal immigrants, say the rule amounts to discrimination and actually makes the workplace more hazardous.

“I can think of no good reason for them to institute this policy,” said Steven Jacobs, the lawyer for the workers who are suing GC Industries in Deep River, Conn. “It’s offensive to people who speak Spanish and is potentially dangerous. It inhibits them from communicating in their native tongue in situations that could put people at risk.”

The notice stated that “there be one language spoken during working time at all plants and facilities of GCI, and that language is English.” It specified that the policy would be enforced when “any employee is ‘on the clock,’” and said violations could lead to warnings and dismissal.

Court documents show that the announcement, which was also posted in Spanish, was signed by company president Thomas Arbella.

But Andres Moran, who speaks fluent English, said he and his four co-plaintiffs needed to communicate in Spanish in order to do their jobs.

“Not everybody over there is fluent in English,” said Moran, 22. “How would I be able to talk to them? I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them. That was my argument. … I kept on speaking Spanish to whoever understood my language.”

Moran said that although the rest of the GCI employees “kind of shut their mouth and didn’t speak at all,” he and the other four continued to use Spanish with their coworkers who weren’t well-versed in English.

The five plaintiffs received a second warning to stop speaking Spanish while at work — or face dismissal. Executives told the workers that they could institute any policy they liked because GCI is a private company.

“I felt like I was a slave, basically,” said Moran. “I felt discriminated against, violated. I didn’t know what to do.”

Moran was later transferred from being a packer — which involves packaging sheets of metal — to the more strenuous and less desirable job of hanger, which requires workers to hang heavy sections of metal on racks on the assembly line.

When he persisted in speaking Spanish and asking for his old job back, Moran was laid off after about nine months with the company, he said.

“Richard [Gordon, GCI general manager] took me outside and said, ‘We don’t need you working anymore. We’re not getting as much production,’” Moran remembered. “The next week, they hired somebody else.”

Jacobs said he also filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of the men with the EEOC and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights in late spring of 2006.

“The company claims that the reason for the rule was to enhance the safety of the workplace,” he said. “I find that excuse hard to accept when 75 to 80 percent of the workforce speaks Spanish.”

He and his clients remain bewildered about what triggered the change in policy.

“I still don’t know why they did it,” Moran said. “Nobody complained. Nobody cared. … They’re still trying to tell people not to speak Spanish.”

To a greater or lesser extent, Butler Sheetmetal understands the concept of language barriers and hard-to-communicate-with-workers – after all, John and Matt have worked with Jasper for well over twenty years and nobody is any the wiser as to what the mumbling jock says from one minute to the next. Also, I’m forever letting my guard down and slipping quaint northern expressions into my conversations during office hours over here in Wheeling.

I’ve had to explain terms such as ‘piece of piss’, ‘hands like cows’ tits’, and ‘butty’ to name but three. And my what fun we have. I am starting to learn that life is a bit easier if you try and say some things with an American twang. For example, instead of me pronouncing something like litre in a heavy Nelson drawl (leeeetur – heavy on the ‘t’), I’ll cave in and be slightly more American by pronouncing the ‘t’ with more of ‘d’’s sensibilities. I caused great consternation in my local Gamestop this past weekend asking if they had any Xbox 360 Elites, only for the poor student/saleskid to ask everybody if they had any Xbox Lates. Still, I do enjoy the deer-in-headlights expressions I quite commonly get.

Long may diversity in spoken language remain, I say.