ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 Two employees at a Whole Foods Market store in Albuquerque say they were suspended last month after complaining about being told they couldn\u2019t speak Spanish to each other while on the job.<\/p>\n
Bryan Baldizan told The Associated Press he and a female employee were suspended for a day after they wrote a letter following a meeting with a manager who told them Spanish was not allowed during work hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d said Baldizan, who works in the store\u2019s food preparation department. \u201cAll we did was say we didn\u2019t believe the policy was fair. We only talk Spanish to each other about personal stuff, not work.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Whole Foods officials told them about company policy and issued the suspensions.<\/p>\n
Ben Friedland, Whole Foods Market Rocky Mountain Region Executive Marketing Coordinator, said the Austin, Texas-based company believes in \u201chaving a uniform form of communication\u201d for a safe working environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, our policy states that all English speaking Team Members must speak English to customers and other Team Members while on the clock,\u201d Friedland said in a statement. \u201cTeam Members are free to speak any language they would like during their breaks, meal periods and before and after work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friedland said the policy doesn\u2019t prevent employees from speaking Spanish to customers who don\u2019t speak English nor does it prevent them from speaking Spanish if all \u201cparties present agree that a different language is their preferred form of communication.\u201d Click here for the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 Two employees at a Whole Foods Market store in Albuquerque say they were suspended last month after complaining about being told they couldn\u2019t speak Spanish to each other while on the job. Bryan Baldizan told The Associated Press he and a female employee were suspended for a day after they wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-important-news-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36087,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086\/revisions\/36087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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