http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3798
By Daniel J. Chacon
Rocky Mountain News
A http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1937 city employee was suspended for four days after he asked two Hispanic co-workers how much it cost their “people to get across the border these days.”
But the disciplined employee, Jack Burghardt, an administrative support assistant in the Clerk and Recorder’s Office, appealed the suspension and won.
Burghardt, a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=345 who has lived in the U.S. for the past 13 years, told a Career Service hearing officer that he meant no harm and that in Europe, people wouldn’t be so easily offended.
Burghardt “testified that he did not intend to be demeaning in asking the question, which came to his mind in thinking about the movie Fast Food Nation,” according to city documents that were recently made public.”As a result of the discipline, (Burghardt) states he now understands that a question such as the one he asked can be offensive,” documents state.
The movie “centers around a meatpacking plant that employs undocumented workers from Mexico and produces tainted beef in unsafe and unsanitary working conditions,” the documents say. “In one of the opening scenes, a group of Mexican people paid a trucker to take them across the border. They are later hired by the meatpacking plant, and their story forms one of the main plot lines in the movie.”
Burghardt told the hearing officer that he was thinking about the movie Nov. 1 when he said aloud to himself: “I wonder how much it costs to cross a border with a guide?”
But co-workers Tina Gallegos and Consuelo Dominguez, who were in the break room eating sandwiches, had a different recollection of what Burghardt said.
According to them, Burghardt asked, “How much did it cost for your people to get across the border these days?”
Dominguez was “shocked,” and Gallegos “was extremely upset” and “humiliated” the rest of the day. In the afternoon, Gallegos broke down in tears.