Thread: Contractors tackle language barrier

Contractors tackle language barrier
By Blake Farmer, News Correspondent
November 06, 2006

The number of working Latinos fatally injured on the job has climbed to its highest point since comprehensive record keeping began in 1992, according to the U.S. Labor Department. And knocking down the language barrier could turn the trend.

The danger has been chalked up to the sheer numbers of immigrants who are in dangerous lines of work such as construction, but also to the communication barriers between Spanish-speaking workers and English-speaking supervisors. Last year, 917 Latinos died nationally, up slightly from 902 in 2004.

Foreign-born Latinos are the most at risk. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 625 of the 917 Latino workers who died on the job in 2005 were born outside the U.S.

Oscar Lainez, who moved from El Salvador to Nashville 10 years ago for a construction job with the Nashville-based Rogers Group Inc., said that communication with his supervisor can still be confusing.

“I get nervous sometimes,” Lainez said. “It’s normal I guess.”

To minimize the chance of further injury and death, Rogers Group in September started teaching English. Lainez and eight other road workers have been attending a two-hour English class each Wednesday afternoon. Rogers Group hired Thuy Nguyen, an instructor with the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute, to come out to a job-site on Briley Parkway where she goes through a specially designed curriculum with the men, who receive their hourly wage for taking the class.

The National Safety Council estimates that one workplace fatality costs an average of $3.7 million. Specifically, Rogers Group has experienced one job-site death within the last five years, though it was not attributed to a miscommunication, according to a company spokesperson.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is working with several local chambers throughout the country to come up with a standardized way to teach English in the workplace.

Alberto Camargo, a recruiter of hourly employees for Rogers Group, said the company traditionally has avoided many accidents thanks to unwritten policies.

“Everybody kind of watches out for everybody out here,” he said.
Nguyen says non-English speakers will often rely on hand motions but easily misunderstand nuanced instructions in English.

“They do have some basic English skills like ‘watch out,’ ‘hello’ [and] ‘mister,’ but not enough to really communicate,” she said.

The greatest challenge is for non-native employees who begin the class as functionally illiterate in their own language, Nguyen says. Raul Limon, a Mexican immigrant and Rogers Group employee, fits that description with just four years of schooling.

“Sometimes you need work and you [don’t] go to school,” Limon said, struggling to find the words. “So in Mexico, you need working to get you food.”

Yuri Cunza, president of the Nashville-area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said employers should do more on the front end to ensure workers have a basic understanding of English.

“The easy way out is to go out and hire some instructor, but that could be costly and complicated,” he said. “What we recommend is diversity training,” though Cunza admitted language still can be an issue.

Tennessee contractors, in recent years, have done fairly well compared to national statistics in avoiding fatal accidents for Latino employees, especially considering the continued influx of immigrants to the Midstate. In 2005, the number of Latino fatalities on the job was down significantly from nine deaths in 2004 to five deaths statewide last year, according to the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Rogers Group isn’t alone in its attempts to ramp up safety by offering language training. Franklin-based Southern Land Company has on occasion brought in Spanish tutors for its landscape crew leaders, according to spokesman Jim Cheney.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/in...&news_id=53087

If these people want to work and live here they should be required to learn how to speak English. Everyone else who immigrated here has done so and they can too. I took German as a language credit in university and my German instructor had a son who has down's syndrome. He spoke his native languauge which is German and spoke English as well. If he can do it so can others.
I had another professor who was born in Cuba and came over as a child. He can't stand people who work with the rest of us and don't want to speak English. He would go to Burger King and the woman at the drive thru would immediately speak Spanish to him even though she didn't know him. He would reply in English and order a Whopper without onions and extra tomatoes and half the sauce on purpose. Many of them would get angry and swear at him in Spanish. He would get his order and then tell the person that it wasn't nice to swear at him and he would repeat what they said.
I have had people come up to me and speak Spanish. I would reply in another language on purpose.
Police and other emergency personnel have problems with this as well and many of them tell the person that they need to learn to speak English. I have seen medical personnel actually comment on how long has this person been in this country and say it was unacceptable that they don't speak English. This was in an area that has not been invaded yet.

Where I live, in San Diego, Mexifornia, they do everything they can to make it so the invaders don't have to learn English. Billboards are in Spanish, 70% of the radio stations are now Spanish, TV stations in Spanish, voting ballots in Spanish, directions and ingredient lists on retail items in Spanish, and of course bilingual education in Spanish (even though bilingual education has been voted out). Why would they bother to learn English if everything has been made so they never have to learn English?

Reptile09: We have a similar situation in Miami. There are billboards in their areas in Spanish and there are radio stations, tv stations and newspapers in Spanish. There are other areas in the county that are not catering to them as much.
The I don't speak English is also used by them to get out of undesirable situations. I see that often. A couple of nights a go a woman in my condo complex was telling some Hispanic to get his car out of her assigned parking spot. They argued and she called security. When security arrived all the sudden they didn't speak English once they saw that the security guards were African American. The woman is a customs officer at the airport and is also Hispanic and told them isn't it amazing how you spoke English to me and know you don't know how!

Yuri Cunza, president of the Nashville-area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said employers should do more on the front end to ensure workers have a basic understanding of English.

Hiring Americans would take care of the problem wouldn't it Cunza?