No one should have to work in an environment where fellow employees malign people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or language. To be a highly visible minority in such a hostile workplace would be disheartening at best, soul-destroying at worst.

The only two black employees at the Montreal office of the Public Service Alliance of Canada say they work in just such a place. The two men told The Gazette they were sent hate mail last month, telling them to "Speak black, it's better." They said their fellow employees criticized anglophones, blacks and Arabs, as well as employment-equity programs.

The PSAC needs to get to the bottom of this very serious complaint as quickly and as openly as possible. The PSAC is one of the country's largest unions, representing more than 172,000 federal-government workers. It states on its website that it has been "at the front of a variety of significant and successful campaigns for workplace and human rights."

If the two Montreal workers' complaints are verified, the union has another significant campaign to wage: ridding its workplace of hostility toward visible-minority workers. That has to be made a top priority.

The idea that in 2011 in Canada, workers feel free to call fellow employees Arab "dogs" or to complain about jobs being "given" to blacks is shocking. Has the Montreal PSAC office been left to languish in some kind of time capsule? According to the two workers (who are francophone), some of their Frenchspeaking colleagues refer to anglophones as "têtes carrées" and complain about having to follow orders from them.

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Cette vidéo a été ajoutée par Vigile
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Given the time-warp problem, it comes as no surprise to learn that these hostilities first broke out after a film from 1980, by nationalist filmmakers Pierre Falardeau and Julien Poulin, was shown at a PSAC officers' conference in 2009. The film, called Speak White, is a series of images of exploited people from around the world at various times, and is based [on a 1968 poem of the same name->11979]. The plight of francophones in Canada is compared to that of blacks in the U.S. in the days of segregation.

A number of viewers were unfamiliar with the decades-old poem and the film and did not understand French. With no context to orient them, several visible-minority employees were disturbed by they believed were deliberately racist images.

This entirely avoidable misunderstanding is part and parcel of what Quebec sociologist Gérard Bouchard has rightly identified as Quebec's unfinished business with minority accommodation.

Unfortunately, this particular case goes beyond mere insensitivity. Hostile work environments require strong measures, including firings and fines. If that's what is needed to pull the recalcitrant members of the PSAC into the new age of equal rights, that's what should be done.