Is this fair?

[Jamie (K)]

What is your opinion on this situation?

Yesterday I was in a supermarket that belongs to a small chain of stores in my area. It specializes in East European, mostly Polish, food, but its customers are not only Polish, but are of many different ethnicities, including Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and very many ordinary Americans. Nonetheless, even though it is not a family business, EVERY employee in the store is from Poland. The employees are not related; it's just that the store doesn't hire people who are not from Poland. When I was there yesterday, I saw many advertisements posted around the store that said they wanted to hire someone for warehouse and stock room help. However, the advertisements were only in Polish. It was clear that they were trying to make sure that only people from Poland applied for the job. I asked one of the employees whether an applicant who wasn't from Poland would be considered for the job, and in a shocked, angry voice, she answered, "I DON'T KNOW!"

Do you think this is fair?

Compare this to the ordinary American supermarket in my area. They hire people from any country, including people who don't speak English yet. I see Albanians there who are now managers but didn't know English when they were first hired. Now these Albanians are hiring Bengalis and people from still other countries, many of whom speak only a little English right now. One of my friends was hired by a department store before she could speak much English, and in half a year she was put in charge of the stock room.

What's your opinion on all this?

[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie,

I think it is discrimnatory and wrong not to consider applicants on basis of their nationality. It's one's suitability to do the job that matters, not where one grew up!

All the best

EU

[lost_soul]

Let's clean America of all the SOB's who don't speak English properly (or at all).
Say no to immigrants ignorant of English and American culture!!!.
(Incidentally, do you still practice lynching ?)
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Alex

A native speaker of Russian

[Jamie (K)]

[lost_soul]

[Englishuser]

Hi lost_soul,

I think both sentences are equally correct. In this context, my sentence means that I think it is wrong not to consider applicants because they are American.

All the best

EU

[lost_soul]

Yeah, I have to eat my words
_________________
Alex

A native speaker of Russian

[Torsten]

Is this really a question of fairness or rather a question of business savvy (or lack thereof)? In the long run it doesn't make much sense to only employ Polish people in a country that is as culturally diverse as the US. I'm sure that with such a myopic approach your business won't get far. On the other hand, I also don't think that it would be very wise to 'force' a company to change their employment policy. They have to understand the advantages of cultural diversity themselves. Who wants to work for a company that had to be forced by law to employ you?
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[Jamie (K)]

[Ralf]

[Jamie (K)]

Ralf, I didn't object specifically to the job posting being in another language. If, for example, their company needed translators who could read and write Polish, it would have been perfectly appropriate to post in Polish. There's no restriction on that. However, if they were using the Polish language to make sure that only Polish people applied for the stock boy jobs, that would be highly illegal, and they could be subject to stiff fines.

Most of the Polish products have never had Polish-only labels. The bread is labeled in English, as are the dairy products, and I know that some of the Polish employees can't read those labels. Even the specific Polish delicacies are labeled either in English only, or in English and Polish. Plus, the Polish names for most of them are the generic terms used in English by monolingual Americans in my area, and everyone knows what they are. The chocolate and candy come equally from Poland and Germany, and those are multi-lingually labeled, so there's no problem with people who are not fluent in Polish being able to stock the shelves. In fact, the only labels I've seen that don't identify the products in English are in Russian, and Poles of the age this store employs generally can't read Russian.

Part of my animosity toward the whole thing is that a large portion of the Polish population in my area tends to be very insular and fairly arrogant, and advertising in Polish only is more an expression of that, rather than an attempt to project an exotic image. It's more about "this is our store" than about trying to project an "exotic Polish image". Nothing Polish is exotic in my area, where people of all nationalities call the day before Ash Wednesday "Pączke Day" and consume Polish jelly doughnuts, and where a lot of other Polish foods and customs have penetrated into ordinary homes.

In my city, the Greek restaurant owners hire a lot of people from Albania, Iraq and Yemen. Mexican restaurant owners sometimes hire regular white-bread Americans. Many Chinese restaurants have Mexicans cooking in them, not to mention the Thai and Vietnamese waitresses they employ. All-American style restaurants hire Albanians to work in them, and Albanians often hire regular Americans to work in theirs. The Italian fruit markets employ Chaldeans, Russians, Filipinos, Americans or just anyone they think will work well. I knew an Irish-American girl who was hired as a waitress by some Chinese, and she learned all the Cantonese she needed on the job. If other nationalities don't have a problem with this, I don't see why a Polish-owned CHAIN of stores should.

Family businesses are a different matter, though.

[Iwanna]

in many cases, a company employs only local people just in consideration of the management cost and convenience.

[Jamie (K)]

[Iwanna]

[Jamie (K)]