Florida bosses told Puerto Rican medical staffers: Speak English or be fired, workers say

[jpak]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/20/puerto-rica-women-florida-health-department-told-speak-english/2059290001/

HAINES CITY, Fla. – Seven Puerto Rican health care workers say supervisors at a Florida government-run clinic warned them to stop speaking Spanish among themselves or they would get fired.

The women work at the Florida Health Department clinic in Haines City.

A Monday statement from the community group La Mesa Boricua de Florida says the group filed a human resources complaint and wrote a letter to the Florida Department of Health.

The workers say the job required they be bilingual because of the Hispanic patients.

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[MagickMuffin]

1. We hired yo because you speak Spanish, NOW quit speaking Spanish

OR we will FIRE YOU!!!

Makes perfect sense.

[Leith]

2. I lived in Japan for a few years in my youth

I had friends from the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and many whose first language was not English, but could speak it. We spoke English to each other.

You know what we talked about? Other friends, what was going on in our lives, places we went to, things we did. Stuff that nobody else would be interested in. We almost never talked about the people around us.

In the US, many of my coworkers spoke Spanish to each other. Other customers in grocery stores often speak Spanish (Chinese, Russian, and other languages I can't identify). While I'm not very good at Spanish, I can pick up enough to get the gist of most conversations. Nobody was ever talking about anything remotely interesting or mean.

People gotta get over the thought that people are talking about them in foreign languages.

[iscooterliberally]

3. I'm no lawyer, but doesn't that violate one's first amendment rights? n/t