Legal Question in Discrimination Law in California
I was hired as a Franchise Consultant for a Commercial Janitorial Master Franchisor in California. When I first started I was told my my job responsibilities were to continue to run our ads in the current hispanic magazine they involved with and meet with potential franchisees and that almost all were hispanic.
Every monday meeting I am reminded as to how crucial my franchise sales dollars are to the company. However i'm now 6 months into this job and the owner makes so many racial based decisions on which franchisee gets which account based on their capabilities of communicating in english with him and operations manager.
I have witnessed so many times when a hispanic franchisee is told by the master franchisor that they needs to buy certain equipment to operate his/her franchise, but when a english speaking franchise needs to buy equipment the master franchisor generously offers to buy it for them personally on his credit card? is this selective racism?
Even worst, connecting this to me as employee... since there are only two direct employees (myself and another young lady) that speak spanish, we are the ones hearing all comments made toward hispanics... its really degrading to hear these things from the mouth of the president/ceo/master franchisor.
Most common comment made is "if the potential franchisee or current franchisee can't communicate with me in english they are not for us, because america was fouded on speaking english"
Is this wrong or in the least bit illegal?
Ive looked up communications and language requirements in our Federal Disclosure Document and absolutelly nothing is mentioned whatsoever.
To sum it all up, all this is now being thrown in my face as owner gave me no notice of taking my salary away and putting me on straight commission due to his belief that potential English franchisees are better.
1 Answer from Attorneys
California is an at will state as to work, so unless you have a contract or the owner made verbal promises that you can prove as to your job responsibility and salary, he can change both. As to the discrimination, it seems your boss based it upon English language ability and not race. How does he treat Asians? If he treats them in the same fashion you would have a problem showing any racial discrimination. There is some business justification that the franchisee needs to be able to speak clearly with your boss, so that what he does may not be a display of actual, actionable bias.
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