One Workforce—Many Languages

English classes are helping employers and employees in many different ways, including accident prevention. DP

Many U.S. employers are investing in English classes to upgrade immigrant workers’ skills.

By Rita Zeidner

On a steamy July afternoon, Antonia Diaz makes her way to a worktable in the bowels of a dusty construction pit outside Washington, D.C., and heaves a circular saw onto a plywood sheet. With her eyes fixed on the wood, she painstakingly makes the first cut in her latest project––construction of a handrail for a dangerous open stairwell her co-workers use to move supplies.

“My work makes it safe for everyone,” she says in accented English. “Otherwise, someone could fall and break a foot or a leg. I’m so proud of what I do.”

It’s a claim she could not have made five years ago, when she immigrated to the United States from Honduras speaking only Spanish and not knowing a miter box from a whipsaw.

Diaz, a brawny one-time truck driver, landed a job as a laborer at Miller & Long, a Maryland construction company, shortly after arriving in the country. Within a few weeks, she began attending free English classes that the company offered to its mostly Spanish-speaking workers on Saturdays.

She also entered Miller & Long’s carpentry apprenticeship, where she was required to study textbooks and other technical materials available only in English. ›

“The teacher would say, ‘I’m sorry, guys, but this is the U.S. and we speak English,’ ” she recalls.

Three years later, her studies paid off. She passed her carpentry certification exam––offered only in English––and was promoted to Miller & Long’s safety team at nearly twice her starting salary. She began dating a co-worker who only speaks English. The couple is now raising their 2-year-old daughter.
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