Why isn't this obvious?

Nancy Pelosi is attempting to block legislation to allow companies to require that their employees speak a common language. I frankly have no idea how anyone could possibly have a problem with this. The ability to communicate within a company is essential. How can you work with someone if you don't speak the same language? Were I to get a job for Volkswagen and the requirement was that I speak German, then I'd sure as hell better learn German. Communication within a company is essential. Trying to require companies to hire employees who can't communicate with each other is ridiculous.

Mi Casa, Su Casa
Nancy Pelosi tries to force the Salvation Army to hire people who can't speak English
Opinion Journal for The Wall Street Journal

It's been less than a week since New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: The Salvation Army.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote last month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,'" he told the Senate last Thursday.

But that's exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do. In March the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required its employees to speak English on the job. The requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. The EEOC claimed the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job. It said that the firings violated the law because the English-only policy was not "relevant" to job performance or safety.

"If it's not relevant, it is discriminatory, it is gratuitous, it is subterfuge to discriminate against people based on national origin," says Rep. Charles Gonzalez of Texas, one of several Hispanic Democrats in the House who threatened to block Ms. Pelosi's attempts to curtail the Alternative Minimum Tax unless she killed the Alexander amendment.