On Nov. 19, about 200 workers filed into a conference hall at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem. As the room started to fill up, the Spanish in the air became more audible – co-workers chatting over a cup of coffee, attendees asking questions of exhibitors, conference organizers mingling with the crowd. Everyone was there for the first-ever Spanish-language conference from Oregon OSHA, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The event, titled “Seguridad, salud y sus derechos en el trabajo” (Safety, health and your rights at work), aimed to address workers and their needs. The full-day conference included presentations and discussions, exhibits and free health screenings.
But aside from the content of the day, the significance of the conference was in the very manner of presentation: Spanish. Oregon OSHA is the government body that safeguards workplace health and security. They are vital in ensuring that workers know their rights and that employers are held accountable for the safety of their employees.
This conference was pivotal in providing this information to Spanish-speaking laborers, an at-risk community in the agriculture and construction industries, among others.
Compared to the rest of the nation, Oregon’s population of Latinx immigrants and U.S.-born citizens is growing at a significant rate. By 2016, 12% of the state’s population was Latinx, representing 72% growth since 2000 compared with the national average of 50%, according to a report from The Oregon Community Foundation. Furthermore, 1 in 8 workers in Oregon is an immigrant, representing a substantial and integral part of the workforce.
When it comes to language, a 2016 report by the Oregon Employment Department found that about 124,000 workers speak English less than “very well,” representing about 7% of all workers in Oregon. Of the workers who speak English less than “very well,” the vast majority are in “natural resources and mining industries,” including agriculture and forestry. In the farming, fishing and forestry industries, almost half (45%) of the state’s workers speak English less than “very well.”
These statistics reveal that not only are immigrants, and Latinx immigrants specifically, a vital part of Oregon’s workforce, but also that this population represents a diversity of languages.
The conference comes at a time when OSHA has made more concerted efforts to meet the needs of the Spanish-speaking immigrant community in Oregon. For example, they continue to develop the PESO Program, a bilingual translation initiative that aims to “help English-speaking employers train and talk about workplace safety and health issues with Spanish-speaking workers.” All government documents can be found translated into Spanish, allowing Spanish-speaking workers to file a complaint, learn about their rights and responsibilities, or report a hazard.
The conference was an important addition to these Spanish-language initiatives, and not just simply because of the language.
“It’s an entirely new conference model,” said Michael Wood, OSHA administrator and the event organizer. “This is the first conference that’s from the workers’ perspective.”
Rather than the conference being geared toward supervisors and advocacy organizations about how to support Latinx workers, the event was specifically crafted to address real and present concerns of workers. Presentations included “Protegiendo Su Salario” (Protecting Your Salary), “Cómo Debe Protegerlo Su Supervisor” (How Should Your Supervisor Protect You), and “¿Que Sucede Si Me Lesiono el en Trabajo?” (What Happens If I Get Injured at Work?).
The 200 attendees were by and large all workers, not bosses or supervisors, and the content of the presentations was meant to arm workers with the knowledge to be their own advocates and to protect themselves, even if their employers fail to do so.
And it turns out that employers do indeed fail their employees.
Conversations at the event included upsetting anecdotes about workplace injury and death. And one common theme seemed to emerge about accidents resulting from a language barrier.
According to OSHA, all employees at any organization must receive effective training and supervision. This can mean that a worker must be properly trained on a specific task, but it also encompasses language. OSHA regulations state, “Workers must receive appropriate safety and health training in a language and literacy level that they understand.” This means that if an employee is not fully fluent in English, they should be granted accommodations to receive training in a language that they do fully understand, be that Spanish or any other language.
OSHA even dictates specific protections for seasonal workers. Rule 437-004-0240 (b) states: “If you have employees with language barriers, you must communicate safety awareness information in a manner that workers can understand. Include content that is either translated into the language used to hire and supervise these employees or that is otherwise effectively conveyed, such as through visual media.”
But employers do not always heed this legal responsibility. Even with free translation services – OSHA provides language consultation at no cost to the organization – many employers do not adequately meet the language needs of their employers.
Alba Johnston, a safety enforcement manager and agriculture program manager with OSHA, co-facilitated a session called “Hacer Uso del Derecho a un Trabajo Seguro” (Making Use of Your Right to Safe Work). The presenters covered everything from basic rights for workers and responsibilities of employers to different forms of discrimination in the workplace.
Johnston spoke about her experience investigating different violations, including accidents resulting from insufficient training. Specifically, Johnston spoke about two cases in which language was a key factor.
The first occurred on a construction site where a worker, Jose Juan Caracheo, was constructing a railing system on the first story of a building. Caracheo was working as a framer for Hernandez Framing Specialist LLC, a framing contractor based in Beaverton. Caracheo had only been employed for 10 days at the time of the accident. According to the incident report, which is accessible to the public, Caracheo was provided with all necessary equipment to carry out his assigned task, including a body harness and rope; however, he was not properly trained on how to use this equipment. While working about 11 feet off the ground, Caracheo loosened the rope attached to his harness so that he could more comfortably bend over. He subsequently lost his balance and fell to the ground, fracturing his leg, which later required surgery.
After investigating this incident, OSHA determined that two violations had occurred: “Because the Personal Fall arrest system was not rigged such that an employee could neither free fall more than 6 feet, nor contact any lower level” and “because the training program did not include the pertinent information to enable employees to recognize and minimize hazards of falling.” Both violations carry a penalty of only $500.
While not explicitly mentioned in the report, language was the key barrier in Caracheo’s training. Johnston shared his story with the group of around 50 attendees at the OSHA conference in order to stress the importance of employers not only providing training but providing effective training, as per OSHA’s regulations.
Caracheo was given proper equipment, and he was indeed trained on how to prevent falls, however this training was conducted in English. Caracheo was severely injured and missed two weeks of work – two weeks of pay – because his employer failed to train him in a language that he fully understood.
The second of the cases, and the more severe, occurred at the Scenic Fruit Co. in Gresham on a production line that processed frozen bananas. Soledad Rivera Reyes had been working at the processing facility for about five years when she was reassigned from her normal duties to work at a position that required her to clean a chute and conveyor belt where bananas were being diced. While she had been verbally instructed on how to use this machinery, the instructions had been in English and Reyes did not fully understand the training. When a big chunk of banana became stuck in the discharge chute, Reyes attempted to remove the banana manually and stuck her right hand into the chute. She immediately realized something was wrong and pulled her hand out, only to find it covered in blood. Reyes ended up losing three fingers.
In this case, Scenic Fruit Co. was cited with three violations: one about proper warning signs on dangerous equipment, the second about potentially hazardous energy sources, and the third about ensuring workers “are properly instructed.”
Again, the report omits any specific reference to language as a cause for insufficient training, and yet at the conference, Johnston again noted that this incident occurred, in part, because Reyes did not understand English. The language barrier in this case was exacerbated by the fact that Spanish was already Reyes’ second language, increasing the chances for miscommunication and potentially lethal misunderstandings. Scenic Fruit received a penalty of $3,310. Reyes missed an undisclosed amount of work and was permanently maimed.
In both of these incidents, the employee was put at risk because the employer, among other things, did not meet its legal responsibility to provide training “in a language and literacy level that (its workers) understand.” These accidents were complex and resulted from a confluence of factors; however, the language of training remains to be a key factor.
When asked about language resources for employers, Johnston stressed that a company could take multiple routes. They could hire an interpreter, create a bilingual training program, or simply request that OSHA provide them with a language consultant to hold the training in Spanish or any other language. “But they have to ask us,” Johnston emphasized.
The onus falls on the employer to ensure that they accommodate their workers’ language needs; OSHA can step in only when requested or after an accident has already occurred. But there doesn’t seem to be much incentive to fulfill this requirement when the penalty for injury resulting from a lack of training can be as little as $500.
So what is being done to combat language barriers in the workplace? OSHA again stresses that they provide Spanish translations of all government documents, as well as Spanish language resources for employers and employees alike.
However, Iván Hernández, the communications manager at Causa, Oregon’s largest immigrant rights organization, said that translations often are not enough.
Official government documents are difficult to understand, even if you have a full grasp of the language. Translations of these important documents have to be done in a way that the target audience – Spanish-speaking migrant laborers – can actually understand, which means parsing the formal legal vocabulary into layman’s terms.
Hernández underscored that these materials “need to be accessible and understandable to all workers” since they directly affect their health and safety. But Hernández also said this is possible: “It is simply a matter of hiring the right people.”
Hernández said that the lack of Spanish-language resources is just the tip of the iceberg, since many immigrants from Mexico and Central America speak indigenous languages as their first language, and they might not speak Spanish at all. When we talk about translation and language needs in the workplace, Hernández said, “we must make things accessible” in all languages.
Access seems to be a core value of the fight for language rights in the workplace. Immigrant rights groups like Causa and PCUN (Piñeros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) fight not only for access to multilingual resources and training materials but simultaneously for improved English-language learning resources.
Spanish-speaking immigrants “want to learn English. It would make their life easier, as well,” Hernández said.
Hernández said these laborers often work from sun-up to sundown, or more, and then have to deal with child care and household responsibilities; there simply is no time to learn English. Even if they do have the time, English courses can cost money or are not geographically convenient, adding to the barriers that make learning English sometimes impossible.
“It’s not an active choice,” Hernández said. There simply is a lack of accessible resources for Spanish-speaking immigrants to learn English.
Despite these barriers, a report from the Oregon Employment Department found that Hispanic Oregonians are more likely to be employed than non-Hispanic white Oregonians. The Latinx population is vital to the state’s economy, and yet, median family income for Latinx families is more than $10,000 lower than for white families.
“It’s important that we all realize that Spanish-speaking immigrants contribute to our way of life,” Hernández said. “They are our neighbors, friends and sometimes family members. We must treat them like anyone else. They are vital, and they are Oregonians, and they should be treated as such.”