Workforce Language Services

Click here to watch WLS’s founder and president Jill Bishop eloquently explain our language and cultural training services at the Midwest Security & Police Conference/Expo. (Once you’re on the page, click on the video icon.)

Some talking points:

Hispanics make up around 15% of the U.S. population, and that number will triple by 2050. Is your organization prepared for the linguistic and cultural challenges?

In our “Spanish for Law Enforcement” trainings, WLS doesn’t focus on that grammar you learned back in 9th grade and have forgotten since. You’ll learn industry-specific terminology that you can use instantly on the job. We’ll help you anticipate challenges and find the appropriate solutions.

WLS offers onsite, customized trainings and workshops to help employers (from police departements to restaurants) prepare their employees for any linguistic or cultural situation that may come up in their industry.

As Jill says, “It’s all about the expressions you need to do your job better.”

A labor group surveyed restaurants in Chicago and found significant segregation between front-of-house workers (waiters, hosts) and back-of-house staff (busboys, dishwashers). The study “found that nearly 80 percent of whites work in the front, nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the back.”

To those of us who have worked in the restaurant business this doesn’t seem like news at all – the discrimination is all too prevalent.  Common all over Chicago’s pubs and steakhouses, we see that “taking the order or seating the clients is the girl next door or a suave older man, most likely white, while a cadre of young Mexican men construct the meal behind the scenes.”

Taking the issue to task, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago teamed with the Working Hands Legal Clinic to file a federal lawsuit against one Andersonville eatery, claiming that the establishment mistreated its kitchen staff. McCormick and Schmicks’ chain just settled a $1.1 claim from black employees who said they weren’t considered for hosts and servers.

But in the restaurants’ defense, aren’t they hiring based on a special skill set required for that position, not based on race? For example, knowledge of food and wine pairings or simply communicating a food order in English.

I would argue that while restaurants don’t always discriminate blatantly, they rarely train or promote their current back-of-house staff. Wouldn’t a restaurant get better long-term results from a staffer with a long employment history at the restaurant, happy to be promoted, than a new hire? Busboy to server would be the perfect transition, for example.

To read the full report in the Chicago Tribune, click here.

An estimated 850,000 adults in the Greater Chicago area have limited English competency skills, according to Literacy Chicago. With many of their children in English-speaking public schools, this creates a huge problem for Chicago schools.

Parents may not need the English communication skills on the job, but without the ability to speak in English, they are unable to communicate with teachers and other parents, as well as their children. One example:

Although Maximina Esteban’s work as a house cleaner does not require her to speak English, her duty as a single mother of two sons does.

Born and raised in Chicago, Esteban’s children, 11 and 7, spend most of their days at school speaking English rather than Spanish.

Despite her attempts to get them to speak Spanish at home, they reply in English, especially her younger son. He understands very little Spanish and rarely uses it with his mother.

Literacy Chicago, which provides free English language training to adults, had their federal funding reduced by 13% for the 2010 fiscal year. They anticipate greater cuts in 2011. Other organizations with English literacy programs are facing similar cuts.

Explains Medill Reports of Northwestern University, “This threat of budget cutbacks makes immigrant parents particularly vulnerable. With fewer opportunities for free English instruction, they will continue to struggle to communicate with their children and their teachers.”

Read the full story here.

Sad, but true — a local Chicago non-profit will be closing its doors after 18 years due to the economic downturn. The MultiCultural Development Center (MCDC) has been an area leader in education related to issues of diversity and cultural inclusion.

From the December 7 press release:

Through its many programs, thousands of participants gained new understanding and knowledge regarding the many people and cultures that make up the world in which we live. The goal of MCDC has been to help build a culture where the attitudes and actions of people foster mutual respect so that people of all backgrounds can fully participate in the workplace as well as in the community.

From 1991 to 2009, MCDC educated thousands of people by promoting cultural understanding and inclusiveness to enhance workplace performance and community relationships. The organization was best known for its educational events, led by presenters such as Dr. Roosevelt Thomas, Tim Wise, Angela Bassett, Jane Elliott and Lee Mun Wah, as well as its trademarked Chronology of World Cultural Events poster calendar.

Workforce Language Services is sad to see this great community resource go, and wishes everyone involved with MCDC the best in the coming year.

Visit the MCDC at http://www.mcdc.org/.

Low-wage workers are consistently denied proper payment—some paid less than minimum wage, and some not compensated for overtime—a new study found. 68% of workers interviewed in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago reported a pay-related violation in the previous week.

The New York Times reports that the study’s authors were surprised by the prevalence of the violation.

“The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”

Also surprising is the extent to which the bad practice affects women and especially immigrant workers. African-Americans had a violation rate almost triple that of whites.

The report brings up the fact that employers often discourage workers from filing workers’ compensation for missed days and medical care: only 8% of workers who suffered injuries on the job did so.

Low-wage workers take a 15% hit to their salaries due to these violations, but the economy suffers too:

“These practices are not just morally reprehensible, but they’re bad for the economy,” said Annette Bernhardt, an author of the study and policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project. “When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.”

Read the full NYTimes article here.

Every penny counts in this down economy, and every person does, too—the 2010 U.S. census will determine where money is allocated (from a pot of $400 billion in federal aid) based on community population counts. Undocumented immigrants and other hard-to-reach populations in the Chicago area and elsewhere have become the target of some creative census awareness outreach measures.

Telemundo, for example, has written in a main character on the Spanish-language soap “Mas sabe el diablo” (”The Devil Knows Best”) who’s a census worker.

Federal authorities have stepped up arrests of illegal immigrants, leading to worries that those residents will remain underground rather than report their presence to a federal census worker. Hence, the soap plot line, in which an unwed mother takes a census job and in the process educates her family — and immigrant viewers — about the government count.

“We’re going wherever the viewers are, even though you’re combining something that’s a little different with the steamy telenovela,” network spokeswoman Michelle Alban said.

Cook County, IL has already seen the hit from undercounting in the 2000 census: a consulting firm estimated that the county will have lost $200 million by the end of this decade. Researchers estimate that the states will lose about $12,000 in federal funds per uncounted person over the next decade.

Local community groups and churches are brainstorming about to reach out to underrepresented groups. At Rogers Park Community Council, members suggested census awareness T-shirts, street murals and multilingual mailers.

“This is not a joke,” Elizabeth Vitell, the council’s executive director, told fellow participants. “This is a chance to do something where we will see results in our communities for years to come.”

Read the full article in the Chicago Tribune here.

For past generations of Hispanics in the United States, becoming part of a corporate entity was sometimes viewed as “selling out.” But for second and third generations, that attitude is changing.

Many Hispanics came to the United States to take advantage of college education, and young Hispanic professionals these days are beginning to reap the benefits. Not only are they climbing the corporate ladder at higher rates than in the past, many are becoming business owners in sectors where Hispanics were previously underrepresented—technology, engineering, finance and law.

Roberto Cornelio, 51, director of the chamber’s Hispanic Entrepreneurship Center, says it’s not just mom-and-pop businesses, either.

“Traditionally, the Hispanic business community focused on providing goods and services to the Hispanic community,” Mr. Cornelio says. “That’s changing. It’s still an important part of our community, but people have been exposed to many other opportunities. We’re seeing people go into technology, and a number of Hispanics have opened professional services business.”

A Chicago Business article quantifies the shift:

• Between 2003-2008, Hispanics in management, business and financial operations rose from 5.9% to 7.5%
• In the same period, Hispanics in chief executive positions rose from 3.3% to 4.8%
• The Illinois Chamber of Commerce has grown 1,000% in the last several years
• 6,787 Hispanics earned MBAs in 2007, making up 4.6% of the degree-holders

And still, there’s a long way to go:

• Hispanics comprise about 15% of the state of Illinois’s population, but only 4% of Illinois businesses are Hispanic-owned (the number is growing, however)
• Hispanics hold 234 seats on Fortune 1,000 corporate boards, only 2.3% of all seats
• There are just six Hispanic CEOs represented in the Fortune 500
• 71% of Fortune 500 companies have no Hispanics on their boards

Many Hispanic business leaders quoted in the article believe that Hispanics will continue to push for more recognition in the business world. Says Leopoldo Lastre, president of the Hispanic Lawyers Assn. of Illinois, “We will see more gains as long as there are opportunities. We’re not looking for the bar to be lowered.”

Click here to read the full article.

A Cafe Magazine article talks about the progress of dual-language schools in Chicago, and benefits their students are receiving.

To clarify: dual-language education is one of several approaches to bilingual education. Unlike ESL or transitional bilingual learning, the dual-language method teaches both English and Spanish to both English and Spanish native speakers. “Dual-language learning emphasizes the idea that English and Spanish are equal languages and that there is not a movement from a lesser language to a better language, but that both are beneficial to learning.”

St. Procopius Elementary protects the native language by teaching about 90% of the day in Spanish in Kindergarten, and progress to a 50/50 model by third grade. The school’s goal is to graduate completely bilingual and bicultural students.

Another dual-language model is Chicago Public Schools’ Inter American Magnet School, opened 30 years ago on the North Side.

Acting Principal Susan Kilbain states that the school’s program benefits all students. In a school of 650 students, about half of the students do not speak Spanish before entering the program. All teachers are bilingual and, unlike St. Procopius, it does not reach the 50/50 point until seventh and eighth grade. “It’s a very successful program,” Kilbain says. “It’s a schoolwide commitment.”

Dual-language education faces one problem: convincing parents, especially second and third generation Latinos who see a stigma associated with the Spanish language, that there is a benefit to being bilingual. Research aside, many parents tend to discourage learning Spanish.

Click here to read the full article.

Even though Tom Zabkowski has lived in the United States for almost 20 years after immigrating from Poland, he struggles to lose his accent. What’s more, he believes it’s holding him back in job interviews.

Many people with foreign accents have recently been taking accent-reduction classes because they don’t feel that they are being understood, and are therefore less marketable. Accent-reduction coaches interviewed for the Tribune report say they’ve seen a recession-related increase in students.

Employment experts say it’s not just Zabkowski who’s putting in the effort to make himself clearer and more marketable — in this down economy, every advantage helps when applying for a job, and accent reduction is part of that.

Stephanie Bickel, who runs a speaking firm with six instructors in Chicago, says that some people are not coming in to reduce a foreign accent, but to change the tone of their voice to sound more professional. “There’s been a noticeable increase in [American] men and women seeking to lower the pitch of their voices,” Bickel said. “It’s a trend that seems to be recession-related.”

Read the full story here.

Chi Town Daily News recently reported on the results of focus groups of young minorities and their perception of AIDS awareness campaigns.  The study found that minorities were distrustful of both the message and the medium used to convey the message:

Their attitudes demonstrated that AIDS awareness initiatives targeted at young people – and blacks, in particular – failed to resonate, says Anjanette Chan Tack, a doctoral student who worked on the study. A 30-second public service announcement bookended by sexually suggestive programming struck participants as ironic.

“They were saying, ‘OK, sure, you’ve got this flash on the screen for 30 seconds…but this in a sea of music videos where people are engaging in sex,’” she says. “You don’t see people using protection; all this stuff is glamorized, and in the middle there is a commercial telling you to protect yourself.”

Participants wondered how they could take the messaging seriously, Chan Tack says.

The article then moves on to describe how public health groups are using the lessons learned from these focus groups to create a message that resonates with minority populations.