Workforce Language Services

Despite the fact that Macy’s does not have an official English-only policy (in line with the clear law prohibiting such policies), eight Somali employees in Minnesota fear for their jobs.  These employees work in the basement sorting merchandise, have no little to no contact with customers, and are sometimes called upon to interpret for Somali customers on the sales floor.

Macy’s has launched an investigation into the allegations that the employees were threatended with dismissal. 

The article also provides some context into the legal framework and the recent rise in complaints regarding civil rights violations:

As part of the federal Civil Rights Act, employers are barred from making decisions about or harassing workers based on national origin, language or accent. But nationally, these complaints are on the rise.

Between 2002 and 2007, complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose from a few hundred to almost 9,400. And even though the law is clear in prohibiting English-only rules, it does allow exceptions for business necessity. That means employers can require English for communication with customers or for safety reasons.

English-only rules also violate Minnesota state human rights law. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights reports it has received about half a dozen English-only complaints recently. Most came from Hmong speakers.

Some corporations are responding to the increasingly adversarial immigration debate with programs like Marriott International’s “Thirst for Knowledge,” which provides language instruction and assimilation assistance for their immigrant employees. 

This program and others are backed by some legislators:

The initiative is supported by a bill recently introduced in Congress. Sponsored by Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., it would provide $350 million for immigrant family literacy programs, individual tax credits for teachers and corporate tax breaks for firms that offer educational workplace programs like “Thirst for Knowledge.”

In addition to support from private firms that employ thousands of immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere, the bill is backed by the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, which recently issued a report about U.S. business and Latinos’ contributions.

The report points out that Latinos make up more than 14 percent of the U.S. workforce and own more than 2 million businesses. It says that foreign-born workers have much to offer but need more help to master English and become more invested in U.S. society.

To read more about this positive move away from xenophobia and toward integration of a large population of U.S. residents, click here.

I’ve always wondered how professional athletes from abroad fared in their daily life as part of an American team.  I also have wondered how they worked as part of a team with limited English skills. 

A comprehensive article in the Toledo Blade gives detailed insight into how pro baseball teams are helping their players from Latin American countries learn English to not only play better on the field, but be able to function off the field in an English-speaking world. 

Some teams begin laying the groundwork for language learning in the players home country while others offer intensive language and culture courses stateside:

The contrast between the Indians’ and Tigers’ programs is an example of using different methods to reach the same goal. It’s seen throughout baseball, as some clubs go the extra mile with their Latin players and others stick to in-house English classes.

The article also draws an interesting parallel between players’ willingness to learn English and their ability to take risks and be agressive on the field:

“A guy who is not embarrassed or afraid to mess up when he’s learning English makes for a more aggressive player,” Benavides said. “The guys who don’t learn or don’t want to learn, they’re generally more reserved. Either way, it translates into how they play.”

Melindez, a major league executive, said Latin players with extensive training in English are often times better equipped to play professionally here. “They can analyze issues, think critically. The feedback I’ve gotten from one of these schools tell them the players are better critical thinkers and more prepared to play the way they want them to play.”

Combine a highly trained population of recent immigrants with a shortage of health professionals in Rhode Island.  Seems like a perfect match for filling the need for health care professionals while allowing immigrants to work in their field, doesn’t it?  However, there are two barriers which prohibit this from happening: the difficulty of transfering foreign-earned credentials and licenses and the fact that many of these professionals only speak limited English. 

The Rhode Island Welcome Back Center run out of Dorcas Place in Providence provides programming to facilitate this transition.  Not only does the center work with the clients on their language skills and provide support for licensing exams, they also connect immigrant professionals with U.S. doctors to teach them about the culture of medical care in the States:

Escudero, a native of Rio de Janeiro who immigrated to give a better chance to himself and to his two children, already took two of the three extensive exams to obtain a license to practice medicine.
      ”I have been observing an American doctor in Middletown for four months and he is helping me to improve the communication with the patient,” he said. “Here they have a lot of details and it’s not easy. The culture is different from the South American culture. I know the Brazilian reality very well. In Brazil, they don’t have the equipment to make the right diagnostics. It was very frustrating. Here… we can’t waste time.”

To read more details on the program, click here.

George Diaz’s op-ed piece in the Orlando Sentinel lambasts the way an English-only rule was enforced in Florida’s Seminole County school cafeterias.  This blog recently linked to the news about the transfer of cafeteria workers after they failed to heed the application of the English-only in the workplace rule. 

As Diaz states, it didn’t have to turn out this way.  But as immigration has turned into a political and social battle, language use has become a symbol  for both sides. 

From Diaz’s piece:

Any workplace involves a mix of personalities, some of whom clash for various reasons. Language can be a volatile trigger point. As someone who’s bilingual, I’m cognizant of the barriers language can create.

It’s rude to constantly speak Spanish if it offends co-workers, but there’s nothing wrong with breaking out the espa�ol now and then. It’s not out of disrespect for my English-only friends. It’s out of respect for my Hispanic culture, and the inseparable ties that bind. Big difference.

Communication breakdowns happen. Maybe someone feels people are talking about them behind their back. Maybe someone feels they are being overwhelmed by another language. All valid issues.

In a perfect world (insert sarcasm here), both sides talk it out — in English — and the workplace continues its everyday grind. In a reactionary, intolerant workplace, you have Seminole school officials coming up with a bogus excuse to disguise the underlying problem of cultures clashing.

The situation in Seminole County has already hit the boiling point, but can serve as a lesson for other regions, companies, and industries: get cultural comptetency training in your place of business.  I’d hope that education about working with diverse staff would create a workplace environment in which people can work through language barriers rather than wage a political and cultural war because of it.

A brief article in the New York Times notes that very few U.S. companies offer language training for employees, despite the growing number of immigrants in the workforce.  While many immigrants come to the U.S. with marketable skills and degrees, only 40 percent speak English. 

To cope, many employers are now hiring bilingual managers, the survey found. Conference Board researchers say investing in a language training program allows employers to recruit the best available talent, regardless of their language limitations.

While this is a good way to go about recruiting talent, I wonder when employers will make the same commitment to providing opportunities for their English-speaking employees to become more competitive in the global business world.  This is especially important as more U.S. companies move off-shore, but it seems that managers in China, India, and Latin America are expected to learn English, not the other way around.

As workplaces become more lingustically diverse, companies are trying to negotiate the balance between making sure all employees can communicate enough to do their jobs and respecting the fact that many employees represent linguistic minorities.  A recent Boston Globe article explores this balancing act, and uses the Tufts Medical Center’s English language learning program as an example.

Nora Moynihan Blake, who directs the housekeeping staff at the Medical Center, found that her staff often couldn’t communicate amongst themselves (within the staff, there are thirty separate languages spoken) nor with patients and visitors.  This has led to misunderstandings, and the staff’s lack of English language competency has stalled their upward mobility.  Blake was the catalyst for onsite English and GED classes.

The Tufts program is unusual. While 80 percent of companies employ workers whose deficiencies in English limit their ability to perform their jobs, only about a third provide remedial language training, and then mostly if a worker asks for help, according to a 2007 Conference Board survey of 70 senior corporate directors of training. “For a lot of companies, it’s a reactive rather than a proactive approach,” says researcher Chris Woock.

The article also raises the question of whether it’s insensitive for those with native languages other than English to communicate in them in front of English speakers at work.  To read more commentary on this question, click here.

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Several Seminole County school cafeteria workers have been told speaking Spanish made their workplace more dangerous. The workers were re-assigned following complaints that they used their native language on the job.Seminole County school district’s risk manager said it has an English-only policy in the kitchens because a lot of workers are suffering kitchen burns. If someone yells “cuidado,” which means “be careful” in Spanish, others might not understand.

Rather than educate and engage school cafeteria workers, this county’s school district chose to simply re-assign the Spanish-speaking offenders.  By taking a hard-line approach to safety in the cafeteria, the district certainly missed an opportunity for education and increased communication across cultures. 

If safety was such a deep concern, how hard would it have been for the employer to give a brief lesson on safety warnings in English and Spanish so that both groups could learn from the incident?  But the school district’s reassignment of the Spanish-speaking staff speaks more to its lack of cultural sensitivity than to its desire to create a safe working environment. 

To read the brief article, click here.

An agreement which sets percentages for the ethnicity and gender of construction workers hired for a new project could change the face of construction work in Philly if approved.   While I’d be interested to know what the demographics of current unionized construction workers is, it seems that no matter the breakdown, work needs to be done to address issues surrounding race:

The urgency of addressing the issue and overcoming a past history of exclusion, racism and division was underscored by a recent report of a white worker taunting a Black worker with a noose on another Center City project. The Human Relations Commission is investigating.

As Philadelphia takes steps to diversify its construction workforce, comprehensive diversity and multiculturalism training would be extremely useful, both to remedy past issues and avoid future problems as the city’s newly integrated consturction workforce learns to work together.

Details about the pending approval of the agreement here.

In the online edition of Human Resource Executives, author Michael Felton-O’Brien offers a comprehensive overview of the benefits and drawbacks of occupational Spanish classes across varied industries.

Some benefits to managers’ learning Spanish:

Companies that lack bilingual managers can also miss out on potentially valuable feedback and ideas from workers, ranging from ways that a certain task could be performed more efficiently to ideas for improving safety, she says.

When employers make the effort to help their managers communicate in Spanish or another language, Baron says, it makes a positive difference with employees. “It will make them feel more comfortable going to the supervisor and asking questions and it will increase rapport, which almost everyone believes leads to a safer workplace.”

But the article also notes that in some situations and industries, employees’ limited knowledge of Spanish can be more helpful than harmful:

But, he says, the life-or-death situations that police officers, firefighters and health-care workers encounter on a daily basis may prove more troublesome.

“[Occupational Spanish classes] can actually be worse than nothing in those situations, because people think they know something when they actually don’t,” says Uyehara. “There have been stories in health care and law-enforcement settings where basic misunderstandings occur and people are given the wrong medical treatment with horrendous results. All kinds of bad things can happen if the information isn’t translated correctly.

Looking at both the benefits and potential drawbacks involved suggests that a two-pronged approach would be wise: increasing managers’ capacity for communicating in the language of their personnel while ensuring that qualified interpreters are available for certain situations and in certain industries. 

To read the complete article, click here.