WPT Archives: 1990s

Freedom to Work

Freedom to Work Transcript

04/03/2003

[gentle music]

– Narrator: This program has been partially funded by the University of Wisconsin Extension. Additional funding provided by the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, Inc.

[gentle music] We came to this continent, to the land of the first people. We came as immigrants. As refugees. As slaves. For over two centuries, we’ve come. From Europe. The Mediterranean. From Russia. From Africa. And Asia. Wave after wave of travelers from around the world, seeking a better life through the freedom to work in America. And now, from Latin America and Mexico come the Latinos.

[upbeat Latin music]

– We hire, we send them to an English class, and we take Spanish. It’s only fair.

– Automated voice: I don’t understand.

– Yo no comprende.

– I wouldn’t consider this to be a hotbed of cultural diversity, but it is, all of the sudden, on our dairies.

– Automated voice: I understand.

– Yo comprende, yo comprende.

– Narrator: Latino immigrants are now over 13% of the nation’s population, now America’s largest minority. Wisconsin has seen its Latino population more than double in the last 10 years. And with America’s continuing labor shortage, these new workers are enthusiastically welcomed by businesses nationwide.

– Paul Jadin: Everybody is seeing a burgeoning Latino community.

– [speaking Spanish]

– Narrator: Former Green Bay mayor Paul Jadin has seen his city’s Latino population explode in the last five years. He organized a Hispanic Advisory Council to work on issues that affect Green Bay’s newest minority community.

– And they’re starting to come in into the area here, and what’s bringing them here, of course, is jobs.

– Mm-hmm.

– Jobs.

– Narrator: The advisory organized a Latino job fair at Bay Beach to help connect employers to these new workers and the workers to essential city services.

– Paul: And that’s a way for us to reach the Hispanic community and for them then to give us feedback.

– Man: Green Bay is a all-American city. Immigrants are from everywhere around the world.

– Narrator: The council works on issues that affect Green Bay, like worker training, cultural and vocational education, racial prejudice, and the integration of new Latino families into the larger Green Bay community.

– When Green Bay was young and you had the Irish and you had the Swedes and you had the Polish, y’know, they became homogenous, they got together, but I think it’s a little bit more difficult. We just can’t blend in because for one thing, we’re darker than most.

– Paul: We’ve got to work on that image, and that means educating the new immigrants better on things like where to park your car at night, how to take your garbage out, how to maintain your lawn.

– It is something wrong to park the cars on the lawn, maybe they don’t know because they don’t have the information.

– People will learn that these are things that we do here and they’re important to everybody. So it’s leaders I think with now, right now, we can do a lot.

– I’m obviously not talking about the color of your skin.

– Mm-hmm.

– I’m talking about the way you conduct yourself in terms of your everyday life. And if it so happens that inside that house that is well-maintained and the lawn is groomed and the leaves are raked and so forth, you’re serving tacos instead of steak and potatoes, more power to us that we’ve got that cuisine in Green Bay.

[gentle music]

– Narrator: Hotels and restaurants across the state are hiring as many Latino waiters, cooks, dishwashers, and cleaning staff as they can attract. The Radisson Hotel in Green Bay is located on the Oneida reservation and run by the Oneida tribe. Here, Native American managers are hiring Asian and Latino workers throughout their hotel and casino.

[upbeat music] Paco Gomez has worked at the Radisson for six years and is now their room service supervisor. He came from Mexico to California 16 years ago, where he worked as a cook.

– Well, I come from Mexico to United States because I try to help my family and help myself too. This is kinda hard when you come from Mexico because there is a different, I guess a different language.

– Narrator: Paco often came in on his days off to help Latino employees with their English. Employees like Maria Riso and Jos Condelario. Jos and Maria can understand English, but have trouble speaking it. This language barrier makes it hard for them to get a promotion.

– Maria:

[speaking Spanish]

– That’s a, yeah, that’s a big problem with, don’t understand nothing, y’know.

– [speaking Spanish]

– Today it’s more easy for Maria.

– Narrator: Paco’s ability to speak English helped him earn a promotion from cook to room service supervisor in the new hotel wing, which was a week away from opening.

– Paco: There’s another room right there. Everything is ready to rock, you know? So this will be nice with a nice bar, with Dom Prignon champagne and strawberries, you know, champagne and orange juice, jump right in the jacuzzi. Oh, with a nice girl.

[laughs]

– Ann Barncard: Hello. What is hello in Spanish?

– Group in unison: Hola.

– Great. Hola.

– Narrator: The Radisson offers English and Spanish classes to its staff during work hours. Ann Barncard, from the Brown County Literacy Council, teaches the Spanish for Managers class.

– The H-A-Y.

– Ann: H-A-Y? Ay.

– Ay?

– Ay.

– Buenos dias.

– Ann: It’s a short amount of time, and hour and a half for four weeks, and what we’re doing basically is we don’t expect anyone to come out fluent in Spanish. But they’ll have a better understanding of what it’s like to learn a language, what’s involved, what their Spanish-speaking couterparts on their jobs are going through to try to learn English.

– Buenos dias.

– Ann: Buenos dias.

– Buenos dias and comma estes.

– Como estas.

– Estas.

– Como estas. How are you? That’s one of our main goals here, is to get people to understand that you don’t just learn English by being there. It takes a lot of time. It takes, on average, five to seven years to learn a language.

– Narrator: Beyond language barriers, there are cultural differences that can be big problems for Latino workers. One is on how family names are structured.

– Ann: In Latin America, the stystem of names is a first name followed by the father’s last name and then the mother’s last name. Alan Sierra Rmirez. This name was his father’s name. This name was his mother’s name. And this is now his full name. So where we would normally say, “Okay, his last name is Rmirez.” That’s not the case. His last name is Sierra. So if you’re alphabetizing names, he would be in the Ss. And this causes a lot of confusion for people.

– Narrator: This difference is crucial for employers to understand, because a mismatch in last names for Social Security and green cards can mean trouble with the Federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship, formerly the INS. Companies with misfiled names have even lost employees due to deportation because of this simple mistake.

– Ann: This is the system, and this should help you a little bit sort out some of those questions about, “Which name am I supposed to be using?”

– Paco:

[speaking Spanish]

– Olga:

[speaking Spanish]

– Paco:

[speaking Spanish]

– Narrator: New employees, like Olga Vejar, speak little English and will need help from Paco and other supervisors who’ve taken the Spanish for Managers class.

– Manager: Hola, Olga. Everything going okay?

– Okay.

– Okay? You got lots of rooms done already. Good job. Good dusting, good vacuuming. Okay?

– Olga: Okay.

– I’ll see you at lunchtime, okay?

– Olga: Okay.

– Okay. We do hire a lot of new employees all the time in housekeeping and laundry, and we get a lot of the applicants that are Spanish-speaking, so we send them to an English class, and we take Spanish. It’s only fair. And after going to class, we always go back to the workplace, and I’ve learned to say “Hello” and things like that, so it’s surprising. They’ll say, “Oh, good.” Y’know, so they know we’re putting an effort forth and we’re hoping that it works out for all of us.

[gentle music]

– Narrator: The Radisson employs over 300 workers and runs its own laundry service. But most businesses send their uniforms and linens out to companies like Bay Towel in Green Bay.

– Goods come in and they’re processed. They’ll sort up to 100,000 items in a day.

– Narrator: John Penzenstadler, Bay Towel’s human resources manager, has been busy developing new programs to help integrate his company’s new immigrant workers.

– John: There has been surely an expanding population of some of the minority groups in Green Bay, Southeast Asian and especially Hispanic in the last few years. We branched out and said, “Well, how can we find an able and ready and willing workforce?” And one of the avenues that we developed was a special outreach to the Hispanic worker.

– Woman: What is the difference between these two words? Que and cat?

– Tutor: And cat? Cat, cat.

– Tutor: Long and short. In the long, how many vowels?

– Man: Two vowels?

– Two vowels. Yeah, how many in the short?

– John: We offered some ESL classes, which is English as a Second Language. Even during some working hours and now outside our working hours so we can afford it and offer it to a broader group, and they’ve been very popular and have really helped.

– Teeth.

– In unison: Teeth.

– Teeth.

– Man: Teeth.

– Teacher: No th in Spanish.

– Woman: Teecks.

– Tutor: I don’t think so.

– Man: Teecks.

– Your tongue between.

[thhhh] And you will feel

[thhhh] air.

[thhhh]

– John: If we can get, for instance, our workers to advance even one level in English, they can go to another level of job and therefore, a higher level of salary.

– Paul: A lot of the people that we have coming in here have a wide range of literacy levels. Many of them are functionally illiterate in their own language, so you’re overcoming a double-edged sword.

– Narrator: Paul Lenzmeier, Bay Towel’s president, has personal reasons for wanting to help his new minority workers.

– Paul: I was always expected to go to college, and the things that I was expected to have, and I was raised in Green Bay, in an all-white community, was not a real expectation out there in the world. And as I was on the first African-American floor in inner city Chicago and Milwaukee, they took me home with them. I learned a whole different story. And since then, I’ve always kinda kept that in my mind, and I’ve always tried to look at accepting differences in people and creating opportunity. A lot of workers did not understand what their responsibilities were as far as being a worker in a structured environment. To come to work on time, y’know, if you can’t be to work, y’know, what are the procedures, who do you call, and what do you say? And then there are other things. Y’know, some are kind of silly, but they happen, y’know. An open refrigerator means you put your lunch in and you take your lunch out. You don’t not put anything in and take somebody else’s out. Those may seem like little issues, but people just really weren’t familiar. Then there’s some of the more major things, y’know, have to do with safety. They didn’t come from workplaces where safety was a concern. As a matter of fact, they felt that if they were injured, that they’d get fired or worse. They didn’t understand it. They also had language barriers. And there were hygiene barriers, there were, y’know, all the different types of barriers when two different groups who have no understanding of each other. We had many listening sessions to educate ’em and bring ’em along, and it took time. But those are the types of things you have to do.

[cheerful keyboard music]

[singing in Spanish]

– Narrator: Each month, Bay Towel hosts a lunchtime party featuring the food and customs of its multicultural workforce. During May, they hosted a Cinco de Mayo party to celebrate an important Mexican holiday.

– Paul: Two of our employees, we found out, were musicians, and we got them volunteered as a keyboard and singer. And so they entertained us a little bit during the day at break times for the people as they shared their food. So we really had a good time that day.

– Singer: iViva la Mexico!

– Narrator: Bay Towel also held Spanish classes along with cultural and financial competency training for its staff. These programs help to attract and retain new Latino workers during Green Bay’s labor shortage.

– We need these people. And these are good additions to our workforce as long as we don’t just take ’em and use ’em, but we take ’em, realize they’re an asset, and then build their skill sets to meet our current and future needs. The objective is not just to have them be at entry-level positions forever. Maintaining a vicious cycle of poverty and lack of skills and lack of education. If you give people the opportunity, they’re going to have loyalty in your company, they’re gonna be telling people about coming to work for this place, they’re gonna stay, they’re gonna give 100%, and because of that, our productivity has increased just tremendously. Our profitability has increased tremendously. We’d better take these people and give ’em the opportunities they need. As I was going through those types of changes in my company, I realized that, geez, other companies must be experiencing the same types of problems. Couldn’t we share, not only the best practices, but resources so that we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time?

– Woman: They’re investing in the future of the community. If we raise the quality and the quantity of the people that we all have access to…

– Paul: This group was called the Employers Workforce Development Network, and our whole goal when we started out the first year in 1999 to 2000 was to work on a diversification of the workforce. In a time of high competition for labor, to get, at that time, 20 companies and about eight public organizations together to say, “Hey, we’ll put our differences aside, “our competitive nature for people aside, “and see if we can figure out ways “of successfully building infrastructures within our company for diversity.” And to do that, we recognize that we would have to do things differently than we were doing them.

– Narrator: EWDM now has over 50 member businesses who take turns hosting monthly meetings, and their many task forces work on issues like immigration, education, worker retention, and language training.

– I’ve recently got certified to be a tutor, and there’s people taking classes in the evenings, I mean, they’re, y’know, holding down two jobs and then in the evenings, they’re going to classes, learning English. And there’s a waiting list for them, they’re crying to have tutors. It’s not that they’re not taking on the responsibility of learning English. I mean, they’re trying as hard as they can, and as an employer, we need these people.

– Paul made a good point before. When you go downtown Green Bay and you see all those Catholic churches within a couple blocks of each other, one was Irish, one was Polish, one was German. Even into our lifetimes, there were priests in those churches that heard confessions in Polish, that heard confessions in German, that heard confessions in Irish. And those were those liminal sorts of things that allowed people to make those adjustments.

– Narrator: As more and more Latino families move to Wisconsin, they contribute to and change our culture. New businesses, new foods, new art, literature, music, new sports, and even new ways to worship, like this church service held in Spanish, add to America’s melting pot of shared community.

– Priest:

[singing in Spanish]

– Radio Host:

[speaking Spanish]

[upbeat Latin music]

[singing in Spanish]

[children exclaiming]

[clapping]

– Narrator: Latinos have been coming to Wisconsin for years to harvest crops and Christmas trees, and work in canneries and nurseries. McKay Nursery, near Waterloo, depends on migrant laborers to plant trees and package plantings that are shipped nationwide.

– Rick Knoche: Our Hispanic people come up and work with us for eight months of the year, basically April through November. Most of them are from two border towns in Texas. They are helping us at this time of the year to get approximately a million plants in the ground.

– Narrator: Rick Knoche has been McKay’s superintendent for over 30 years. He remembers when the company’s president decided to retire, but did not want McKay to be bought out by a large corporation. So McKay’s owners decided to share their company with their workers by profit sharing.

– Rick: In 1973, our company became an ESOP company. ESOP stands for Employee Stock Ownership Program.

– Narrator: After migrant workers return to McKay for two consecutive years, they receive company stock, which is invested for them in a retirement program. Most years, that stock has been gaining 20% in annual value. The more time the workers invest in McKay, the more company stock they own.

– Rick: Whatever they can do to make us a more efficient company will show up on their shares. A worker here, if he works here for 25 to 30 years, could have anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000 in his ESOP program. Upon his retirement, that would be rolled over into investments for him, and he can live off of dividends from those shares.

– Narrator: McKay also provides housing for their workers. Their barracks even have satellite television so workers can watch Spanish language channels. McKay’s camps have won migrant housing awards from the state, and their workers live there for free.

– Rick: I think a lot of them chip together and buy their groceries. They are fantastic cooks. Our employees recognize it as good housing, and this is another thing that has them coming back to us every year.

[gentle acoustic guitar music]

– Narrator: The one benefit McKay can’t provide is healthcare coverage. Since their workers are not state residents and only work in the state half the year, no insurance companies will cover them.

– Rick: We have continued to look for a insurance provider that would take care of our Hispanic people, but at this time, we haven’t found anybody.

[lively acoustic guitar music]

– Narrator: Some workers have moved their families up to Waterloo and work at McKay full time, with full health care benefits.

– And these red bud right here is gonna go in one-gallon container.

– Narrator: Bernardo Garza came to the nursery when he was 19 years old, and decided to stay and raise his family in Wisconsin.

– We used to come to Wautoma, and we used to pick pickles there for a month and a half. And then end up, finish up the year in McKay Nursery here. We were flying like geese, y’know? Going up and down.

– Narrator: Garza is now McKay’s warehouse manager. He owns a house in Waterloo and a lake cabin in northern Wisconsin. And after 25 years of profit sharing, Bernardo is looking forward to a worry-free retirement. When you get almost 25% to put in your retirement, what else you want, y’know?

– Rick: We feel that we get a more dedicated employee. We feel we’re able to get people coming back. We have a very high return, so this means that we don’t have to retrain people. Many of them are able to become managers. They feel like they’re owners. They’re better employees as a result.

– Narrator: Nurseries, Christmas tree farms, and canneries aren’t the only rural businesses that rely on Latino workers.

[solemn flute music] Even in Wisconsin’s heartland, many dairy farms have undergone a remarkable transformation. Once, dairy farming was a solid family business. But low prices, bad weather, and competition with enormous, new corporate farms have forced many family farms to shut down. And many remaining dairy farmers now face Wisconsin’s labor shortage, as their grown children and farmhands move away to find more stable futures.

– Tom Wall:

[speaking Spanish]

– Mike Studey: And you guys give Letitia a break?

– Yeah!

[all laughing]

– Narrator: But in Manitowoc County near Green Bay, dairy farms are thriving with the help of new Latino farmhands. Union Valley Dairy is Mike Studey and Mike Getter’s farm. Last year, they hired six Latino workers to milk 500 cows twice a day and clean the barns. The workers don’t speak English, and the farm families don’t speak Spanish. So they hired Tom Wall from Language Links to translate. Wall says Latino milkers on dairy farms represent a new and important trend.

– Tom: It’s a tough job. Not a lot of people are looking for this kind of work. If you really love it, it’s for you, but if not, you’ve gotta look elsewhere for people who really need the work.

– And I don’t know if I’d call it a trend anymore, would you?

– No, I just think it’s the way it is.

– The way of life.

– Narrator: Tom Wall started Language Links, a bilingual service for farmers. He translates during the monthly meetings at the Union Valley Dairy Farm.

– Be more observant down there. If you see something out of the norm or unusual, like I think Raul maybe found a calf, y’know, a cow calved early, make sure you call me or somebody if they see something out of the norm.

– Tom:

[speaking Spanish]

– Watch the small skid-steer in the lower part here.

– Tom:

[speaking Spanish]

– Mike: Okay, watch the skid-steer and tell me what the person in the skid-steer does wrong.

– Tom:

[speaking Spanish]

– Mike: Oh, geez!

– Tom:

[speaking Spanish]

– Worker:

[speaking Spanish]

– Tom: He crossed by the feet?

– Mike: Right. Okay, you saw what he did. Drove over the feet. The diseases are spread through the manure, okay? A lot of diseases are carried through the manure. What happened is we contaminated every cow in group one.

– Tom: Okay.

[speaking Spanish]

– Mike: There’s two solutions. What could have been done differently?

– Tom:

[speaking Spanish]

– Worker:

[speaking Spanish]

– Tom: He said, “Move the skid-steer that’s in the way.”

– Mike: Over here, that’s one. What’s the second thing?

– Worker:

[speaking Spanish]

– Tom: Open the gate by the alley there?

– Mike: Okay. We have cameras in our barn, and it’s a good learning experience for them.

– Tom: It’s an opportunity for the guys to see that management really is watching what’s going on and they care.

[gentle music]

[cat meowing]

– Narrator: Food safety is a critical issue on dairy farms, as salmonella, E. coli, and a host of other bovine diseases are always a threat. It’s critical that Mike’s Latino milkers understand proper cleaning procedures, and with Tom’s help, they can.

– Scott Gunderson: The communication issue, like in any business, is critical. And especially on a dairy farm of any magnitude, but if we have 500 cows, well, if they have a sickness or a disease, we need all employees to know how to communicate to the herd manager what the problems are. If not, it means economic disaster for that farm.

– Narrator: Scott Gunderson, Manitowoc County’s Extension Dairy Agent, and Faye Malek, Family Living Educator for the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, are frequent visitors to Mike’s farm. Gunderson says there are now 45 farms in Manitowoc County employing Latino labor. And because few farmers speak Spanish, translation services like Language Links are critical.

– I think Language Links definitely fits a need that will only help our industry succeed here.

– Faye: This is a research project called the Latino Focus.

– Narrator: Faye Malek organized focus groups to study the issues of her county’s new Latino workers. She found nine important areas of need, including housing, medical care, immigration and citizenship, and employment barriers with English-speaking farmers.

– Faye: It was very much appreciated that some of our dairy farm employers are learning to speak Spanish.

– I wish schools, for example, would start teaching Spanish and other foreign languages early. My daughter at seven would love to learn Spanish, and now’s the time to teach her. Unfortunately, the schools don’t offer that.

– Narrator: Mike Getter’s wife Jermaine is studying Spanish and is the main liaison with their workers.

– My Spanish teacher said that the way to learn would be go to Mexico and live there for at least a month to six weeks. I guess my hardest part is to remember what the words mean. I know it’s a word I know, but then I gotta think about what it means.

[laughs]

– I think Spanish-speaking people know sentence structure a lot better than English-speaking people.

– There’s really not a lot a person can just pick up in the course of five weeks. But it sure gets the ball rolling, gets the producer, gives him a chance to try to interact more, get kind of a personality with his workers by speaking the little bit he learned the night before.

– Narrator: Jermaine and Tom translate the farm’s work schedules and birthday and special event messages into Spanish to help create a family atmosphere.

– They’re basically very family-oriented. They take care of each other, and I guess I would have to say they do a better job of that than we do.

[laughs]

– iHola!

– Tom: I wouldn’t consider this to be a hotbed of cultural diversity. But it is, all of the sudden, on our dairies. Dairy farmers are becoming the most open-minded people that I work with, that I’ve ever worked with. Now they’re beginning to defend the Hispanic population here, whereas maybe their neighbors are making comments about “Why don’t they learn English?” Or “Why don’t they go home?” They’re the ones now defending why we need Hispanic labor in northeast Wisconsin.

– Recorded voice 1: Comprende usted?

– Bill Shager: Comprende usted.

– Recorded voice 1: Comprende usted?

– Recorded voice 2: It is, that is.

– Eso es.

– Recorded voice 1: Es o es.

– Eso es.

– Eso es.

– Narrator: Bill Shager, executive vice president of the Graber-Saris company in Verona, Wisconsin, is learning Spanish on drives to and from work. Shager’s company manufactures bicycle racks, and he has seen his workforce become 85% Latino over the last seven years. Only 1/4 of these workers speak English, so Shager decided that instead of requiring his workers to learn English, Graber managers would learn Spanish.

– The perfect world is that we all speak the same language. But it’s not a perfect world. So we thought it’d be easier to change us and then show them that we’re willing to change, and hopefully through that effort, encourage them to learn more English.

[machinery grinding]

– Narrator: Since their new workforce has become mostly Latino, the company has had all work signs, paperwork, and company documents and manuals translated into Spanish. They’ve even hired attorneys to help workers with immigration issues.

– We won’t hire lawyers who bring people over, but if we have people here and their visa’s up and there’s some red tape issues, we’ve enlisted some help and tried to keep them because they don’t have the wherewithal. And they being Joe Employee versus us the company, you know, we have contacts, we can get through the tape. And so we’ve done that. You know, it’s very important to us as a company to get better, and if I have 80% of my workforce Latino, it’s very important for me to be able to relate to them and communicate with them to help me get better.

– Recorded voice 2: How much does it cost?

– Quantro questa?

– Recorded voice 1: Quantro questa.

– Bill: It’s a different world.

– Recorded voice 1: Quantro questa.

– Example: I have a four-year-old daughter. And we were reading a book, and y’know, I go, “Count for me. How many ducks?” And she counted five ducks. And she goes, “You want me to count in Spanish?” And I’m like, “Sure.” And she goes, “Uno, dos, trs, quatro, cinco.” And she counted ’em in Spanish. And I mean, I live in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. I mean, it’s pretty whitebread out there. And somewhere along the line, they’re picking it up. It’s happening. And so, I mean, that was my jump start. The fact that my daughter’s already learning it at four.

– Recorded voice: Yo comprende.

– Bill: Yo comprende. It’s healthy for everyone. Whatever we can do in our little world to help that along, I think, is a good thing.

[machinery grinding]

– Narrator: Graber also sponsors their Latino workers’ soccer team, providing money for equipment and uniforms.

– Bill: It’s using the company for the greater good.

[upbeat music]

[group speaking Spanish]

– [speaking Spanish]

– Narrator: Soccer, a very popular game in Central and South America, is Wisconsin’s hottest new sport. A little more than five years ago, baseball and football were the games at recess. Now, kids are also playing soccer. This game is a daily recess event at Cherokee Middle School in Madison.

[children talking] Cherokee and other schools around the state are taking part in an innovative way to teach their new Latino students. Many children only speak Spanish when they arrive. For part of the day, they’re taught core curriculum in their native language, and then learn English the rest of the day. Their teacher at Cherokee is Sarah Hughes.

– This is a class of 13 students. Most of them have come within the last year from either Mexico or El Salvador. So bilingual ed gives these kids the chance to learn their math skills, their science skills in their native language.

– Dos con dos?

– Narrator: While bilingual schools are considered by some to be controversial, research on bilingual education shows that children who are taught in two languages become more fluent in both. They’re better able to keep up with their English-speaking classmates, while students who are forced to learn in a language they don’t understand often fall behind. These students are learning the American math system, which to them is also new.

– Sarah: Learning math at the sixth-grade level is stressful enough without having a different language thrown in on top of it. In Mexico and El Salvador, they use the metric system. A lot of things are new for these kids. That’s where bilingual education comes in.

– [reading in Spanish]

– Sarah: These kids need a place to show how they’re smart. They’re everything any other sixth grader is. They’re just smart in Spanish. And so bilingual education gives them the chance to keep progressing in their content areas while acquiring English, and they have a very comfortable environment in which to try out those words that might not always come out perfectly the first time. Jeanette is one of the students that will be quickly progressing on to a mainstream classroom. She’s from Mexico. Elondra, like Jeanette, will be mainstream shortly.

– [speaking Spanish]

– Sarah: Oscar has been here for less than a year, from El Salvador. Ali has been here for a short time as well. He’s from Mexico. Are you more comfortable here than you think you would be in another class?

[speaking Spanish]

– Si.

– Sarah: Si? Porque?

– [speaking Spanish]

– Sarah: Okay. “We like being a part of this class “’cause we can understand the teacher and the other students who speak Spanish.”

[speaking Spanish] You like being here in America?

– Si.

– Sarah: Yeah? What do you like most about being in America?

– [speaking Spanish]

– Sarah: The United States really takes care of the kids here?

– Narrator: The Madison Metropolitan School District is hoping to have an entire bilingual school someday, where both English and Spanish-speaking students can learn each other’s languages. Sarah Hughes thinks bilingual programs teach skills that will be valuable in America’s new job market.

– Sarah: As the Hispanic population in the United States keeps growing, I think it’s going to be increasingly important that people be bilingual.

[gentle music]

– Clara Monerosa:

[speaking Spanish]

– Narrator: Students aren’t the only ones learning new bilingual skills in Wisconsin. School systems with new Latino students are finding new ways to help their parents become more involved with their schools and communities.

– We’ve seen so many transient students. We don’t know if we have all the kids coming back in August, so when we do the meetings in August, we for sure know that those kids are coming to our school and those are the expectations for our school.

– Narrator: The Green Bay School District brought in the California-based Mexican American Legal Education and Defense Fund, or MALDEF, to lead a training session, which was taught in Spanish.

– Clara:

[speaking Spanish]

– Narrator: Clara Monerosa is director of MALDEF’s national parent partnership program.

– Some of the barriers that the Latino immigrant parents often find are language access. Many of the materials may not be translated. There may not be a person that speaks their language. In addition, there is that fear factor. There are issues dealing with immigration status that may prevent them from accessing the school information. They’re learning that parents should talk to their teachers, should be able to have a relationship with their school principal, and should know who their elected representatives are. And that parents have a voice.

[applause] Next group, next group.

– Narrator: During small group discussions, teachers, like Luis Suto, are learning how to break down educational barriers for Latino students.

– Barriers are many. And education is not perceived as a tool to achieve success. People that are immigrants coming from another country, they come from rural areas. Requires a transition that right now, we’re trying to ease for the newer students, immigrants that are coming to the area.

– We can’t read this.

– But it’s in Spanish.

– We’re not Spanish; we’re Hmong.

[group laughing]

– I apologize; I thought you were Hispanic.

– We were simulating how it is at a parent-teacher conference. And so we wanna get a taste of what it’s like being the parent or the teacher, in the teacher’s shoes.

– Hermine Garcia works at Green Bay’s technical college and says she learned a lot from the group’s roleplaying session.

– I see that there is a D- here, under the mathematics.

– Okay.

– And I just wondered if you can explain a little bit…

– Sure, that is a very good grade. I mean, Ds, I don’t really give better than Ds.

[group laughing] This is the best grade he could get, so he’s doing fine. You don’t have to worry about it.

– Man: But we should still talk about it because…

– Why would we puzzle that? This is the best grade he could get.

– Because I have some standards for my son.

– My goal is to learn how to be a trainer and how to train parents to be leaders, and also how to help the parents guide their children towards higher education.

– Teacher:

[speaking Spanish]

– Clara:

[speaking Spanish] What we’re really doing is preparing our future generation to make sure that the Latinos are accessing higher education, that they have a choice.

[gentle music]

– Narrator: Jim Blakeslee is on his way to Spanish class inside Uniek, Inc.’s factory in Waunakee, Wisconsin. Jim is Vice President of Human Resources at Uniek, which manufactures picture frames for Target and Walmart stores nationwide. In the last five years, almost half of Uniek’s workers are new Latino immigrants from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Honduras.

– Jim: They are very hard workers. They are eager to work as many hours as we can offer ’em. And once we learn how to communicate and explain and train them on what’s expected, they’re able to do a very good job.

– All, ah, alla, aca. Basically meaning, there, over there, there or here, over there, over here.

– Narrator: With new language barriers to overcome, Jim organized a Spanish for managers class, taught by a Latino employee.

– Jim: Mirna Medina, who is a person here in HR, the human resource department, she’s done a good job of developing phrases that we would need, that we would use in our daily language.

– How would you differentiate, other than pointing with your finger, that you meant here or there?

– If you always say “aqu,” they’re gonna bring them directly to you.

– Man: Mm-hmm.

– If you say, “aca,” they’re also gonna bring them directly to you. Most of the people that were in the class were the maintenance technicians and some of the line leads. What I’m teaching in the class is in the Spanish that I know for sure they’re gonna be using every day. It’s what we talk about out there. We’re talking about frames, we’re talking about a line, we’re talking about machines. That’s the Spanish language I’m teaching.

[speaking Spanish]

– Si.

– Mirna:

[speaking Spanish]

– Si.

– Jim: What I noticed in just learning to say, “Hello,” “Hola” in Spanish, you can generally get a reaction, you know? You can get eye contact and somebody smiling back at you. So, hablo Espaol poquito. But I’m getting better.

– Narrator: Mirna noticed that many Latino employees were carpooling to work because city buses don’t run to their suburban factory. And when cars break down, an entire group of workers lose their ride to work, often for days at a time. So she applied for a state Department of Workforce Development grant that funds a free ride program for stranded workers. Now, they’ll be able to get free cab rides to and from the plant for three or more days until their cars are repaired.

– I supply the services that are doing, and that’s what I’m doing right now, putting them in their paychecks.

[speaking Spanish]

[gentle music] Our human resources department, almost the whole department is bilingual. They have the freedom to come over here and talk to us in Spanish, and we’re able to hire them and, you know, interview them and do anything in their own language. And so that’s impacting even more people. They said they don’t really see the need to realy know the language right away, but they know in the future they will learn it, so at least to get something where they can start.

[speaking Spanish] Very good, very good. And I think eventually, Spanish will be a requirement. A lot of people will need to be bilingual.

[lively music]

– Narrator: One Wisconsin company with an extensive immigrant worker program is Springs Window Fashions factory in Middleton, Wisconsin. Springs has added many new Latino workers over the last five years, according to the company’s communications managaer, Deb Garretts.

– Our employees represent 35 different countries. Mexico, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, a lot of Latin American countries, South America, so they’re really coming from all over.

– My name is Jaime Jimenez, and I came from South America, Bolivia. I leave from my country. In my country, we don’t have a future. We are many poor people. Everybody’s talking, like, about America, and that was my dream since I was little kid. We came here for a better life, and also for the schools for our kids. I have to live now for my kids.

[upbeat music]

– My name is Maria Solinas. My country, I was in Bolivia. Come here for my family, for my daughters. I have three daughters. I provide what I need for my job, uh-huh, what… The parts… I don’t speak very well English. I understand, I’m sure.

– Obviously, there’s some English problems. A lot of them understand a lot, but they aren’t comfortable speaking and they’re not sure of the language. So that’s the big one, but they also need to learn about measuring, they need to learn math. They need to understand the language we use in our jobs, building our products.

– Trudy Baker: So now, let’s ask a couple of questions about reading this chart. This is called la tabla, or in English, a table. Or sometimes, we call it a chart. And it’s important to know how to read a chart. You’ll have many of them on your GED test.

– Narrator: Trudy Baker teaches at Springs Window’s learning center, located inside the factory. the school is open 24 hours a day, every day. Workers are encouraged to complete their high school equivalency, or GED diploma. Having the school inside the plant makes it easier.

– Deb: Some people are working two jobs, they have large families, they need to get home and take care of their kids. And some people have said they don’t know where they would learn this stuff if they weren’t able to do it here.

– Trudy: So first number is always either right or left, second number up or down.

– Narrator: Math skills are stressed because they’re critical to making custom-ordered window blinds. Workers who know only the metric system must learn American math to accurately measure and assemble blinds. Trudy Baker says all this training builds a more competent workforce for the company.

– I see it giving people the ability to apply for higher-level jobs. I see them be just better team players in their department, to join teams and have the confidence to just take a more active role.

– Narrator: The company also has a computer center next to the school. Workers can get technical training and check email and newspapers from home. The lab is also open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

– Roya: I didn’t know about anything about computers. I’ve been taking some of the classes here, and the ESL classes, English and math.

– Narrator: Roya Castillo immmigrated from the Dominican Republic and has worked at Springs Window for five years.

– I came to United States to get a better future, go to school.

[lively music]

– Narrator: Roya has learned English and become a team leader at Springs. She helps with employment interviews and translates for supervisors, in addition to her line work duties on the factory floor. Roya’s new computer skills are useful on the assembly lines and have put her in line for promotions. Her goal at Springs is to get a job in their office.

– We have a lot of opportunity to go up and up. Got a lot of opportunity up here.

[lively music]

– Grows.

– Grows.

– Between.

– Between.

– There.

– There.

– Narrator: The company also organized a volunteer tutoring program, where new employees like Fernando Quidos can learn English from a fellow worker who learned it before him.

– I came in United States for studying and my son. Porque, because in my country, it is very difficult for the college.

– Thank you.

– Narrator: Fernando is learning English from his colleague, Paul Wagavasa, who immigrated from Uganda.

– Often.

– Often, often.

– Either.

– Often.

– Even, either.

– Off.

– Yeah, often.

– Off, of-ten? Or of-fen?

– Some choose to say “of-ten.” And others say “of-fen.”

– I listen to people say “of-ten.”

– What is helping, like, Fernando to learn more English is we’re building a bridge between cultures.

– Right.

– One at a time. You don’t only teach, but you are learning a lot from your student. That’s right.

– Deb: We heard from supervisors and managers that they could see these people blossoming, confidence growing, and we know several of the people have made the leap then from working with a tutor here to taking classes at MATC, and even some pre-college or college classes.

– Narrator: And once English and math are learned and high school exams are passed, Springs Window Fashions will pay up to 75% of their workers’ tuition for university or technical college classes. Deb Garretts believes her company gains as much as her employees by subsidizing education.

– It gives us some good people to promote from within, so we don’t always have to look outside for people. And not only are they staying, they’re bringing their brothers and sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews to work here too. They’re loyal.

[gentle music]

– I think our Latino population is going to continue to grow. It is exactly the way it was, you know, when the European migration occurred. It’s clearly a melting pot.

– It just makes you step back and see the bigger picture of things and, you know, realize what makes the world go around.

– This is part of the change process. And the difference is the people that we have here are gonna make it successful.

– Diversity’s helping by default. Society’s mixing at a very rapid rate. We only have to learn how to live together.

[children laughing, talking]

[gentle music]

– Narrator: This program has been partially funded by the University of Wisconsin Extension. Additional funding provided by the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, Inc.