The United States government has taken the side of four Filipino nurses who were terminated last year from a Baltimore hospital for speaking Tagalog.
The nurses were victims of discrimination, the US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) concluded in an August 16 decision, an ABS CBN report stated.
EEOC Baltimore field office director Gerald Kiel said the four Filipinos were subjected to “unequal terms and conditions of employment, hostile work environment, disciplinary action and discharge because of their national origin.”
Kiel added, in the decision that the employer, Bon Secours Hospital System, appeared to have singled out the Filipina nurses.
“Other employees spoke Spanish and other languages contrary to the policies and were not disciplined. In addition, it appears more serious infractions of work rules were not comparably punished,” he said.
The four Filipino nurses—Corina Capunitan Yap, Anna Rowena Rosales, Hachelle Natano, and Jazziel Granada- have accused their employer in 2010 of firing them without due process after they spoke in Tagalog, their native tongue.
Bon Secours Hospital imposed an English-only rule for duty personnel in and outside its emergency department in early 2010. But the EEOC in its August 16 decision said this rule “constitutes unlawful discrimination” because of the way it was applied to the Filipina nurses.
The nurses said they spoke Tagalog only during their break time and away from patients and other hospital staff.
The nurses’ lawyer, Arnedo Valera of the Migrant Heritage Commission (MHC), praised the EEOC decision. “This is a great victory for immigrants and cultural diversity,” he told ABS-CBN.
“The English-only rule in work places has nothing to do with one’s performance of duties and is discriminatory,” he said in the interview.
“Every immigrant has the right to speak their own native language whenever they want to so long as they do not compromise or put their patients in danger like the case of Bon Secours,” Valera added.
The EEOC urged the management of Bon Secours Hospital to settle with the Filipina nurses. “This decision is final. The Commission now invites the parties to join with it in reaching a just resolution of this matter,” Keil said.
(AJPress)
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