Contractors tackle language barrier

By Blake Farmer, News Correspondent

NashvilleCityPaper.com: 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.
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