<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> Sorry about the useless link.  Here's the full text of the story: ======================================================== Workers Fight English-Only Policy  By MARTHA IRVINE  Associated Press Writer  CHICAGO (AP) — Carlos Solero couldn't believe his ears when his bosses started reprimanding him for speaking Spanish on the job.  ``Even if I was singing to myself or just mumbling, I would get a warning,'' the  31-year-old assembly-line worker says of the ``English only'' policy his bosses  instituted at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant two years ago.  The company said the policy was needed to improve  communication on its assembly line. Eventually, Solero was asked  to sign a work agreement that included the policy — but refused.  ``I told them, 'You cannot shut me up,''' says Solero, who was  fired three days later.  Now he and seven other Spanish-speakers — and the federal  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — have filed  lawsuits against Watlow Batavia, a metal-casting and assembly  plant in Batavia, Ill.  Legal experts say it's part of a growing movement against  employers who try to force workers to speak English on the job.  ``I think we're going to see more and more of these types of  lawsuits, especially as the population of immigrants grows and  more languages are spoken in the workplace,'' says Jose Behar,  an EEOC attorney handling the agency's lawsuit against Watlow.  Complaints filed by the EEOC against companies with  English-only polices have nearly tripled in the last three years,  according to an agency spokesman. Ninety-one were filed  nationwide last year, compared with 32 in 1996.  It's not that English-only policies are illegal. Companies can have  them as long as they can prove they are a ``business necessity''  — say, in an air-traffic control tower.  Trouble is, say Behar and others, some companies are taking it  too far — and instituting policies often because they simply want  to know what their employees are talking about.  ``When there's some type of health and safety at stake, those  are situations where English only should be required. But in the  vast majority of jobs, there really is no justification,'' says Donya  Fernandez, an attorney with the Language Rights Project, a San  Francisco-based organization that serves as a resource for  workers who either can't or sometimes prefer not to speak  English.  This summer, the organization helped work out an agreement at  an Emeryville, Calif., casino where kitchen cooks were told they  had to speak English, even though they all spoke Cantonese.  Human resource officials agree they're having to deal more often  with candidates who speak other languages as technology  companies increasingly are recruiting from overseas.  Jeff Hawn, a computer industry headhunter for Cleveland-based  Management Recruiters, says he's often asked to find candidates  who speak another language — most recently, a request for a  Korean-speaking computer systems engineer.  But he's also seen a language backlash. He says a hiring manager  at a Fortune 100 company in New York recently asked him not  to send any more candidates with strong accents for an Internet  hardware sales position.  ``She was really pushing the envelope of EEOC laws. I was really  uncomfortable,'' says Hawn, who complained to the manager's  supervisor.  Officials at Watlow defend their English-only policy, which they  say was temporary and part of an overall plan to improve an  assembly department in crisis.  ``We have nothing against speaking any other language as long  as the customer's needs are being met ... But the department was  experiencing problems where we thought communication was  only one of many issues,'' said Diana Rader, the human resources  manager for the company.  Most of the workers in the assembly department spoke Spanish,  she concedes. ``(But) when you had supervisors and customers  coming in and trying to help solve the problems, the common  language was English,'' she says.  The cases against Watlow Batavia are expected to be heard in  U.S. District Court in Chicago early next year.  Historically, rulings have been mixed. The U.S. Supreme Court  refused to review a federal appeals court's 1994 decision that  allowed a South San Francisco, Calif., meatpacker to continue  using its English-only policy — a ruling President Clinton  opposed. But in January, a federal judge in Chicago ruled in favor  of 200 workers who fought an English-only policy at  Synchro-Start Products, a Niles, Ill., manufacturing company.  In the meantime, Solero has gotten a job as a line worker at  another suburban Chicago company, Kraft Foods Inc., where he  says he's free to speak Spanish.  ``We're in the United States. I understand that,'' says Solero,  who grew up in Puerto Rico and now lives in Aurora, Ill. ``But  when I'm talking to another Hispanic person, why shouldn't I be  able to speak my own language?''</HTML>