paperless station casinos employee website

English, a citizens’ action group with 1.7 million members whose lobbying efforts include petitioning the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans who speak English poorly or not at all has increased 65 percent since 1990 as immigration rates rise.īut while hefty settlements might slow the spread of English-only policies and prevent discriminatory workplace practices, many argue that these rules also serve to unite and protect people of different origins. Ernest Haffner, an attorney adviser to the EEOC, expects that number to grow as more languages are spoken in the workplace.

Last year, the EEOC received 228 charges challenging English-only policies in the workplace. But it also underscored how today’s controversial English-only policies are dividing America’s ethnically diverse workforces into warring factions. The judgment was heralded as a victory for foreign-language-speaking workers everywhere. Six months ago, the Colorado Central Station Casino was ordered to pay $1.5 million for subjecting its employees to unlawful English-only rules. The EEOC filed a class-action suit on behalf of the casino’s angry housekeepers in March of 2001. Humiliated and verbally harassed, a group of Spanish-speaking housekeepers at the casino, including Ramos and Flores, took their plight to the U.S. Senior-level managers and non-Hispanic casino employees soon began shouting “English, English” at the Hispanic employees when encountering them in the halls. “We were afraid that if they caught us even saying ‘adios,’ we’d get in trouble.” “Just to say good-bye, either my husband would have to follow me outside or we’d have to speak in the housekeeping closet, which was crazy,” Ramos recalls. The new rule posed problems for Ramos and her monolingual, Spanish-speaking husband. Any housekeeping employees who uttered so much as a word in Spanish were to be given a written warning or fired outright. Shortly after Ramos was hired, the casino’s human resources director ordered the housekeeping manager and supervisors to enforce a blanket English-only language policy in the predominantly Spanish-speaking housekeeping department. But what began as a convenient work arrangement ended in anger, humiliation and a million-dollar legal settlement. At the time, her husband, Jorge Flores, worked the night shift at the 50,000-square-foot gaming establishment nestled in the small town of Black Hawk. Nearly five years ago, Lorraine Ramos was hired to work as a housekeeper at the Colorado Central Station Casino.

Paperless station casinos employee website