The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against Albertsons Companies, Inc. on behalf of Hispanic employees at the company’s San Diego stores. The workers say they were subjected to harassment and hostility because of a policy that bars them from speaking Spanish anywhere on store property, even during their breaks.
The San Diego Union Tribune’s Morgan Cook reported earlier this week that the prohibition was enforced even when the workers were assisting Spanish-speaking customers.
In or around 2012, Albertsons developed an unwritten “English-only policy,” which Albertsons “implemented as essentially a no Spanish policy,” the lawsuit alleges. “In a training video, managers and employees were instructed that employees should not speak Spanish as long as there was a non-Spanish speaking person present.”
An upper-level manager at an Albertsons store on Lake Murray Boulevard in San Diego allegedly communicated to Hispanic employees, including Guadalupe Zamorano and Hermelinda Stevenson, that “they could not speak Spanish anywhere on the premises regardless of whether they were on break,” according to the lawsuit. They were also forbidden to speak Spanish to Spanish-speaking customers, the lawsuit says.
In an October 2012 incident, Zamorano and Stevenson claim they were admonished by store director Richard Brown for speaking Spanish while standing in front of the store on break. In December of the same year, Zamorano was reprimanded again for using Spanish while attempting to assist a Spanish-speaking customer.
After the first incident, the San Diego Union Tribune reports that Zamorano attempted to complain via the company’s hotline, only to be told by a representative who took the complaint that “she needed to speak English because she was living in the United States.”
She applied to be transferred to another store the following year, but was told that her request would not be taken up unless mention of the harassment — which she had cited in the request — was removed.