Saturday, August 09, 2003, 12:51 GMT
A Northern California marketing research firm agreed this month to pay $55,000 in lost wages and damages to a Chinese American interviewer who said a supervisor forced her out because she spoke English with an accent.
¡§I felt terrible,¡¨ said M. Chow of Pinole as she recalled the supervisor whose behavior led her to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. ¡§It was stressful because he monitored me every day, telling me that I did something wrong here, didn¡¦t say certain words right.¡¨
Speaking with a discernible but understandable accent, she requested that she be identified by her first initial, and neither the supervisor¡¦s name nor that of the firm was disclosed as part of the settlement. However, the ACLU attorney who represented her talked at length about what she had endured and what her victory may mean.
¡§Employers should be on notice,¡¨ said Ed Chen, who directs the group¡¦s Language Rights Project. ¡§An employer may not harass or terminate an employee solely because the employee speaks with an accent or uses a foreign language at work. Those that do are at risk of having to pay for their actions.¡¨
Chow, 40, has lived in the United States for 15 years. From 1992 to 1994, she worked at the marketing company. During most of her stint there, she received raises along with favorable reviews; the comments in her evaluations included, ¡§Excellent all-around job! Keep it up!¡¨ and ¡§Congratulations... you qualify for a raise in all categories.¡¨
But Chow¡¦s last supervisor, who came on six months before she left, gave her less than satisfactory ratings and subjected her to daily ¡§tutorials¡¨ to correct her enunciation, according to the EEOC¡¦s findings.
¡§Every day, he asked me to sit with him for half an hour to practice reading the questionaire,¡¨ Chow recalled. ¡§I felt terrible.¡¨
Eventually, he told Chow, hired as a bilingual English and Cantonese interviewer, that because ¡§she didn¡¦t speak English so well,¡¨ she should work only one hour a day and focus only on Cantonese interviewing assignments.
¡§I was hurt...I was hired as a bilingual,¡¨ Chow said. ¡§If they didn¡¦t think I could perform, then they shouldn¡¦t have hired me.¡¨
She decided to quit and to take her case to the EEOC, which is handling a growing number of accent discrimination cases as the population itself diversifies. One in three California workers speaks a foreign language at home; the national ratio is 1 in 14, according to U.S. Census figures. More than a quarter of residents of Asian descent speak limited English, according to the Census.
¡§So long as she could be understood, there were no communication problem, she could ask questions, get information for her survey, she was qualified,¡¨ Chen asserted. ¡§We saw no documentation that anyone ever had difficulty understanding her. Her supervisor wasn¡¦t pleased with her enunciation, her tone, sometimes the choppiness of her pace, as he described it.¡¨
Employers generally are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of accent, Chen said, adding that workers cannot be fired simply because an employer or customer does not like the sound of an accent.
¡§Employers cannot rely upon prejudices of customers,¡¨ Chen explained. Just as an employer cannot hire only men just because clients want it to, he said, ¡§if customers prefer to deal with someone with no accent, simply because of those preferences, you can¡¦t give into that either.¡¨
Chow has waited five years for the decision, the first three spent in part-time work. Eventually, she said, she landed a full-time position in telecommunications. She declined to provide more detail about the job.
Chow said she feels ¡§great¡¨ about the settlement, though she admitted she had hoped for a larger award given the length of the investigation.
¡§This will signal that they have to be very cautious in making judgments about accents, according equal opportunity to people,¡¨ said her lawyer. ¡§There is monetary and legal liability when you make a wrong decision in this area.¡¨
¡§I felt terrible,¡¨ said M. Chow of Pinole as she recalled the supervisor whose behavior led her to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. ¡§It was stressful because he monitored me every day, telling me that I did something wrong here, didn¡¦t say certain words right.¡¨
Speaking with a discernible but understandable accent, she requested that she be identified by her first initial, and neither the supervisor¡¦s name nor that of the firm was disclosed as part of the settlement. However, the ACLU attorney who represented her talked at length about what she had endured and what her victory may mean.
¡§Employers should be on notice,¡¨ said Ed Chen, who directs the group¡¦s Language Rights Project. ¡§An employer may not harass or terminate an employee solely because the employee speaks with an accent or uses a foreign language at work. Those that do are at risk of having to pay for their actions.¡¨
Chow, 40, has lived in the United States for 15 years. From 1992 to 1994, she worked at the marketing company. During most of her stint there, she received raises along with favorable reviews; the comments in her evaluations included, ¡§Excellent all-around job! Keep it up!¡¨ and ¡§Congratulations... you qualify for a raise in all categories.¡¨
But Chow¡¦s last supervisor, who came on six months before she left, gave her less than satisfactory ratings and subjected her to daily ¡§tutorials¡¨ to correct her enunciation, according to the EEOC¡¦s findings.
¡§Every day, he asked me to sit with him for half an hour to practice reading the questionaire,¡¨ Chow recalled. ¡§I felt terrible.¡¨
Eventually, he told Chow, hired as a bilingual English and Cantonese interviewer, that because ¡§she didn¡¦t speak English so well,¡¨ she should work only one hour a day and focus only on Cantonese interviewing assignments.
¡§I was hurt...I was hired as a bilingual,¡¨ Chow said. ¡§If they didn¡¦t think I could perform, then they shouldn¡¦t have hired me.¡¨
She decided to quit and to take her case to the EEOC, which is handling a growing number of accent discrimination cases as the population itself diversifies. One in three California workers speaks a foreign language at home; the national ratio is 1 in 14, according to U.S. Census figures. More than a quarter of residents of Asian descent speak limited English, according to the Census.
¡§So long as she could be understood, there were no communication problem, she could ask questions, get information for her survey, she was qualified,¡¨ Chen asserted. ¡§We saw no documentation that anyone ever had difficulty understanding her. Her supervisor wasn¡¦t pleased with her enunciation, her tone, sometimes the choppiness of her pace, as he described it.¡¨
Employers generally are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of accent, Chen said, adding that workers cannot be fired simply because an employer or customer does not like the sound of an accent.
¡§Employers cannot rely upon prejudices of customers,¡¨ Chen explained. Just as an employer cannot hire only men just because clients want it to, he said, ¡§if customers prefer to deal with someone with no accent, simply because of those preferences, you can¡¦t give into that either.¡¨
Chow has waited five years for the decision, the first three spent in part-time work. Eventually, she said, she landed a full-time position in telecommunications. She declined to provide more detail about the job.
Chow said she feels ¡§great¡¨ about the settlement, though she admitted she had hoped for a larger award given the length of the investigation.
¡§This will signal that they have to be very cautious in making judgments about accents, according equal opportunity to people,¡¨ said her lawyer. ¡§There is monetary and legal liability when you make a wrong decision in this area.¡¨