An end to lingual primacy?
You would have thought that it was all so simple. You go to another country to start a better life; you learn the language of that country in order to integrate with your new-found homeland and to enable you to obtain gainful employment.
Well that has been the template used successfully by generations of migrants worldwide, but could that all be about to change?
A company in the USA has been taken to court by a group of ex-employees and pending an appeal, it seems that the former employees have provisionally won their case. The employees are all of Hispanic origin and a number of them are actually not able to communicate fluently in English.
When their former employers introduced a rule requiring English to be used as the primary form of communication within the workplace, the workers refused and were sacked.
The language rule was introduced as a safety measure as there was a lot of heavy moving plant as well as pools of molten metal on the ‘shop floor’ and additionally being American, the Managers and Supervisors only spoke English. When, therefore, they issued (frequent) shouted directions / warnings they did so in English but more to the point, whenever anyone in the workforce did the likewise, it made sense to have it done in a standardised language.
It seems, however, that this has breached the workers Human Rights and the Courts have found in their favour (pending an appeal). How long will it be, I wonder, before we roll up to the Post Office in order to buy a book of stamps and are greeted in Latvian?