Welsh required for jobs
 

Well over 75% in Wales do not speak Welsh. So is this "jobs for the boyos" ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57776429

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

surely this is it discriminatory against those who do not speak Welsh in a widely English speaking country

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

I don’t see this as much of a problem as long as Drakeford is happy to foot the bill for the cost of staff to learn Welsh to a “courtesy” level.

---------- Post added at 13:01 ---------- Previous post was at 13:00 ----------

Hang on hang on….you’re suggesting it’s discriminatory to expect people in Wales to speak Welsh?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

If you're Welsh and proud of your roots, keep speaking it :tu:

Local councils are quick to employ interpreters for many languages, why is Welsh any different?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

It’s our national language?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Absolutely yes

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Really? How does that work?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Whatever way you look at it, the predominant and primary language in Wales, is English.
Welsh is a secondary language. How many Welsh-only speakers are they likely to hire? None, because would create problems dealing with the majority English speakers. Therefore pretty much all Welsh speakers can speak English anyway, so everybody that they have to deal with, can speak a language other than Welsh.
Pure bias, with no justification whatsoever.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Quite easy you do not try to force people to learn a language for a job. Saying no one can work here who only speaks English (which you all speak) is no different to saying no women or no men. It is discriminatory

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

They haven't said they want Welsh-only speakers.

Bias towards their own national language and wanting to help keep it alive...who'd have thought it eh?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

keep it alive in schools, promote it in other ways do not discriminate against those who do not speak it

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Absolutely. They're not discriminating though.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

saying we will only give jobs to those who know something is exactly discriminating

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Drakeford (The Undertaker) seems to think that Wales is a bilingual country, and not a country with 2 languages, one of which is used far more than the other.

"You are by far the best candidate for the job. Do you speak Welsh?"

"No".

"Would you be prepared to learn Welsh?"

"No".

"Then the job is not yours".

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

If that's what they were saying then yes it would be.

But they're not, are they? Read the article, they're being given 6 months to pick it up.

Welsh is one of the easiest languages for non-English speaking people to pick up. Lots of jobs expect you to learn new skills in a given timeframe, why is this any different?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Does the same apply to foreigners that come to the UK and work in factories?

They need to speak, read, write English to a certain standard . . or no job

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

or on appointment I did read the article

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

So we’re agreed they’ll be given 6 months, good.

Nothing wrong with expecting a new employee to pick up new skills in 6 months.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Many years ago (70s) we went to Anglesey, we popped in to a small shop, a couple were in there speaking Welsh, they stopped when we walked in and then carried on speaking in Welsh, although we didn't speak Welsh we could tell they were talking about us.

We did our shop and approached the till, after 5 minutes of stand there my dad said "sod this let's go elsewhere" and plonked the basket on the side and started to leave the owner said in English "You can't leave that there".

My just said "watch me" as we walked out.

I do also remember that during that 2 weeks it rained only 3 times, Morning, Noon and night.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

You can learn English. You can’t learn to be a different gender.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

I expected this from someone.

Here is the difference


Almost everyone in Wales speaks English so why force some to learn Welsh

Almost everyone in England speaks English so to just get by in society they need to learn some.

your point holds as much water as Henry's bucket

It is not lost on me that English is more of an international language of trade and commerce which does as a nation makes us lazy in the art of picking up other languages

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

In 2001 I was in London and the woman I was seeing suggested we stop off at this pub. I went to bar and when I ordered drink 2 guys next to me said “FFS get back down the mines”.

Boring, we’ve all heard stories like that.

---------- Post added at 13:47 ---------- Previous post was at 13:46 ----------

So I assume you’re against expecting someone to learn new skills to a required level when they start a new job?

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

tell that to the LGBTQ+ community

---------- Post added at 13:48 ---------- Previous post was at 13:47 ----------

Nope

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Excellent, I knew you’d come round eventually :tu:

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

There is you assuming again

You do not need to learn Welsh to speak to people who speak English same as you do not need to learn how to weld to work on a checkout in Tesco

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Of course I’m assuming. You agreed there’s nothing wrong with expecting an employee to learn a new skill.

The WG is expecting new employees to learn a new skill.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

You wrote:

Quite easy you do not try to force people to learn a language for a job.

and then go on to wriggle out of it :p:

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Not the point, they have no justification for the restriction.
The only possible justification for such a policy is if there was a large enough pool of Welsh-only speakers that they had to deal with, and they had a lack of people who could also speak Welsh.

Anyway they would also have to not allow Welsh-only speaking applicants, because they would be required to communicate with English speakers.
Speaking Welsh is not needed to do the job, speaking English is.

---------- Post added at 14:07 ---------- Previous post was at 14:05 ----------

Only if it's necessary to perform the job.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

I'm pretty certain that if it genuinely was "discrimination" then the Equalities and Human Rights Commission would be all over it.

I presume they're not? That's because it isn't discrimination.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

No I did not try to wriggle anywhere . I stand by that statement

Quite easy you do not try to force people to learn a language for a job.


There I said it again

But I will also add the rest which you conveniently decided not to repeat

Saying no one can work here who only speaks English (which you all speak) is no different to saying no women or no men. It is discriminatory

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Equality and Human Rights Commission, Article 14.

Immigration Act 2016

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Presumably, the Welsh Government's lawyers are confident that a requirement to speak Welsh can be objectively and reasonably justified.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Thanks, although I'm not exactly sure why you posted that? It doesn't really have anything to do with what I said.

---------- Post added at 14:33 ---------- Previous post was at 14:31 ----------

It isn't, otherwise the Equalities people would be all over it by now.

From the article:

You're simply overreacting on a massive scale.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

just posting my opinion. None of it matters to me personally

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

There’s nothing in the list of requirements that anyone brought up in the Welsh education system shouldn’t be able to do already. To be honest anyone from outside Wales committed to living and working there ought to be able to get themselves in a position to do all of that within six months. As a club committee member at a Welsh university in the 1990s I, and all my English contemporaries, learned “poster Welsh” pretty quickly so we could advertise dates and locations of our meetings bilingually on campus. I’m not sure what the controversy is here.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

Exactly, there is no discrimination. There'll always be people who do their best to go looking for some where there is none but they won't have any luck with this.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

The Welsh Assembly (I refuse to refer to them as a Gov*****nt) and some Welsh local authorities have been doing this unofficially for a while. My wife works in social services, she has done a mixture of permanent and contract work over the past few years in England and Wales, and a contract working directly for the Welsh Assembly.

She was told by one large local authority whom she had worked for previously that, it was expected of her to speak or learn Welsh, and they offered her to attend an evening class. She refused, she pointed out that she already spoke five or six languages, most of them fluently. She also pointed out that where she was born English and Afrikaans was taught in school, and tribal/local languages were taught at home.

She also pointed out that as she had previous experience of the department and the job role, she was well aware that learning Welsh was a waste and that one of the Indian/Pakstani languages or east European would be more beneficial to the job role. They still employed her, it's all about supply and demand, she would have just taken a contract elsewhere.

Social services in Wales are crying out for qualified people, so I can't see them terminating anyone's contract because they accept the job and then refuse to learn Welsh, or not employ them because they refuse to learn it. They can't afford to take that approach, If they do, they will be in more of a mess than they are now.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

There’s a good deal of ambiguity there though … was she expected to become fluent? That’s clearly a waste of time and flies in the face of reality. It’s also not what’s being demanded in this case, which really only amounts to an ability to affirm someone’s right to initiate contact with a government agency in their first language. Seeing as it was government policy that almost drove the language to extinction in the first place, I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

Re: Welsh required for jobs
 

She was asked to attend evening classes, I don't know about the duration of those classes. I don't believe the conversation went that far.

The ability to affirm someone's right to make contact in a language other than English, would surely mean the person knowing enough of the language to direct them to someone fluent who can help with their query. If the requirement is for the person to learn to say parrot fashion, "good morning", "good afternoon" etc then that is surely a pointless exercise. The only thing there being gained then is the nationalists have scored a point. Personally knowing a few Plaid supporters, they are all to keen to point out on social media etc and make a big thing of any slight mistakes being made.

I would disagree that government policy was the only reason that drove the language to extinction, one side of my family were non-Welsh speakers and came here to work in the industry. The other side of the family came here from a Welsh speaking area of North Wales, they didn't teach their children (my grandfather) Welsh because there was no practical point. The language spoken down the mines and other industries in the South East Wales area was English. Presumably it was safer down the mines if everyone spoke the same language. (Like South Africa where they created a common language for use in the mines)

Whilst looking through the national archives a couple of years ago, I came across an article about the school my grandfather attended. The newspaper article was from the early 1900s just before he was born, and it was saying that they were having trouble teaching children Welsh as they were unable to employ any teachers who spoke Welsh.

I can understand parents wanting to teach their children the Welsh language at home, but I cannot see the use of it being taught in school. I was lucky enough to be schooled before compulsory/mandatory (The Welsh nationalists like to point out the difference) Welsh classes, but I did have to suffer the poor offerings of S4C instead of C4 in the analogue terrestrial TV days. The Welsh nationalists were of course very proud of S4C, and would often boast that it was the most expensive programme per viewer to produce in the world.