The Welsh Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language, Peter Black, has called on the Assembly Government to give serious consideration to bringing in legislation to protect the rights of workers who wished to communicate with colleagues in Welsh.
Mr. Black was speaking following a ruling by Thomas Cook that staff at its branch in Bangor should discuss work-related matters in English and a similar instruction by the Adecco recruitment agency that their workers should not speak Welsh at work at the Tesco financial services centre in Llanishen.
"There is no suggestion in either case that Thomas Cook or Tesco would refuse to deal with customers through the medium of Welsh," said Mr. Black. "However, there is a clear issue to be addressed if workers are being forbidden to communicate with each other in Welsh whilst at work. It seems to me that the best way to resolve this would be to enshrine in law additional employment protections that would prevent employers following the example of Thomas Cook and Adecco in the future."
"Such a change in the law would not add to firm's costs but it would ensure that whilst they are operating in Wales due regard is taken of the linguistic sensitivities of the area in which they are based and the rights of their employees. This is not the sort of thing that we should need to legislate on but if commonsense cannot prevail then the Assembly Government may have no choice."
