Workforce Language Services

In elementary schools across the country, children learn about how early settlers came to this country to escape religious intolerance acros the pond.  Unfortunately, freedom to practice one’s religion does not extend to 21st century Muslim immigrants. 

A meatpacking company Wednesday laid off about 100 Muslim immigrant workers who walked off the job last week in protest of the firm’s refusal to give them time to pray during the holy month of Ramadan.

When Ramadan began Sept. 1, workers said supervisors informally gave them time to break their daylong fast at sundown.

But non-Muslim employees protested, and on Friday, JBS Swift & Co. officials refused to give workers break time to pray and eat.

And an especially nauseating quote from the Diversity Spectrum article:

Ibrahim said Swift supervisors had shut off water fountains Friday evening to prevent Muslim workers from having their traditional drink to break the fast, and in one case a supervisor grabbed an employee by the neck, yanking him from his prayers.

“If I’d known there was a problem with prayer, I would have never come here,” Ibrahim said.

I bet Roger Williams would be disgusted.

Some New York schools are expanding their course offerings to give students a competitive edge in an increasingly multinational and technologically advanced world.  These include: Arabic, Mandarin, and nanotechnology. 

In line with the thinking that the earlier the better, the Albany City School District is starting a dual-language immersion class for four-year olds this fall:

There will be nine children whose native language is Spanish and nine whose native language is English in the new dual language pre-K at the Delaware Community School. It had been offered for K through grade 5 students since 1996.

“The parents have been asking for this for years,” said Spanish teacher Melanie Pores, who helped develop the program. The new pre-K teacher will be Ana Banda-Wemple, who had been a bilingual teacher in Peru.

“We’re piloting this approach for pre-K,” said Pores. The students will alternate languages for half of each day. The little tykes will attend a full day of instruction, from 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

“Our schools are becoming more multi-cultural and bilingual at a fast pace,” Pores said. “Our English speakers and Spanish speakers learn from each other, working in the same classroom.”

To read the entire article, click here.

On August 16th, Workforce Language Service posted a link to a report about Hispanics’ lack of health care information. 

A recent article in Connecticut’s Record-Journal delves more deeply into the reality of Hispanics and health care in the state as well as organizations and funding sources which are addressing the disparities in receipt of medical services.

Steps are being taken at the state level to combat health disparity as well. The Connecticut Association of Directors of Health recently announced a three million dollar grant it received from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to develop the Health Equity Index, a statewide initiative designed to identify, and ultimately eliminate, many of the problems brought about by health disparity.

“Tackling health inequities requires broadening our view and looking at how the conditions in which a person works and lives influence his or her wellbeing,” Richard Matheny, president of the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health, said in a press release. “This grant will allow us to continue examining these factors in our local communities and effectively advocate for policy change.”

To read more about Latinos and health care in Connecticut, click here.

Maryland DMV patrons pointed out inaccuracies in Spanish-language signs posted at statewide offices.  The brief article notes that a third-party translator was paid nineteen cents per letter, which is quite a high rate, especially if the translation is egregiously bad.

“They were taken down today,” Coyle said Tuesday. “They should have been taken down a while ago … not all branches got the correct message to take the signs down.”

The MVA posted the signs at 10 locations that process out-of-country applications for driver’s licenses, she said. Under federal law, signs, forms and other materials must be translated into languages spoken by at least 3 percent of the population, Coyle said.

It’s quite surprising that the DMV actually paid someone for such a painfully incorrect translation.  In my experience, inaccurate translations usually come from people who don’t charge for their services, but are asked to do it by their employer without having any special translation experience or education.

To read the entire Watchdog column, click here.

On August 12th, the Workforce Language Services blog posted a link to an article describing the use of the Phraselator in NJ Police Departments.  Across the country, California police officers are piloting a similar device in San Mateo County.  The positively galactic sounding ECTACO Speechguard PD-5 provides a similar service for officers who are faced with a language barrier during traffic stops.

The town of Hillsborough isn’t your typical American melting pot, as its 10,000 residents have a median income of $260,000.  Nonetheless, the officer who has the device has used it four times within the past three weeks:

But approximately one-third of the community is Asian and a significant percentage of that populationspeaks a bare minimum of English. The percentage of the town’s Hispanic population is in the low single digits, but many of the domestic workers who tend to the residents’ mansions speak only Spanish.

As a result, the town’s police officers handle situations involving people who speak limited to no English on about one in 15 to 20 calls, Chinca said.

The most common of these situations for Chinca is “your basic everyday traffic stop,” he said.

Hillsborough’s Lieutenant says that if the first device works out well that more will be purchased for the department. To read more, click here.

On Thursday, August 25th, 2008, the National Council of La Raza released a report on Latinos in the U.S. workforce and the effects of the economic downturn on job quality and safety. 

According to the report, there are more than 20 million Latino workers in the U.S., accounting for more than 14 percent of the labor force. But despite that strong participation, Latinos are concentrated in occupations that frequently fall short on critical indicators of job quality, including employer-based health and retirement plans.

You can read the announcement in Phoenix Business Journal and download the entire report at NCLR’s website.