BB.lv: “This shouldn’t be the case in Latvia!”

The MP claims that there is “discrimination in the labour market” in the LR. “Because of the Russian language, equal opportunities to build a career are being taken away and the lives of tens of thousands of Latvian young people are being ruined.” Meanwhile, “more than 800,000 children have been born in Latvia since the restoration of independence, most of whom do not speak Russian today.”

“The law establishes the principle that knowledge of a language may be required of an employee if there is an objective, justified need. The employer must always be able to justify the need for certain language requirements.”

“I recently encountered a positive example in a Lidl store: a customer asked a question in Russian to a salesperson who was also Russian by nationality. The salesperson answered the customer in Latvian. The Russian customer understood everything and received an answer to his question. This could also be the store’s policy, it could be determined by the management. There will always be some exceptions, like a translator, or someone who has to edit texts, or a DJ on Russian radio, but these are rare exceptions, and not the other way around, like today, when an exception is when an entrepreneur does not require knowledge of Russian for an employee. The principle is this: in Latvia, you need to know Latvian! If you know Latvian, you can work in most jobs.”

“A person should not be required to know several languages ​​unless they need it to perform their job duties,” emphasizes A. Yudin. “The statistics at the moment are quite shocking: the latest research by the Latvian Language Agency shows that 55% of young people have been denied a job due to not knowing Russian. This should not be the case in Latvia! Even if the owner of the company is a foreigner and wants to communicate with everyone in their native language because it is more convenient for them, since if the business is located in Latvia, the employer must also know and use the state language. It is not good that someone perceives this as a fight against the Russian language. This is not the case. We are talking about everyone having equal opportunities in the labor market, so that there is no discrimination against one group of the population.”

“It is humanly clear that learning five languages ​​is better than two, and learning ten languages ​​is better than five, but the real situation today is that our children are actually being discriminated against because they do not know a third language – Russian. Everyone already knows English. This cannot be allowed in Latvia. An employer cannot be prohibited from hiring people who speak many languages. But we cannot allow this language criterion to simply exclude a person from applying for a specific vacancy. Our biggest problem is that our potential employees receive the answer from employers – you are useless because you do not know Russian. This cannot be allowed! Anyone can work in Latvia if they know Latvian.”