Employees of Pirelli Armstrong Study Italian
A year after Armstrong Tire Co. was acquired by the Italian tire-maker Pirelli, several dozen employees of the new Pirelli Armstrong Tire Corp. are going the extra mile and studying the mother tongue of their mother company.
Treading where they haven’t been in years--the classroom--the new Italian language students range from vice presidents to engineers.
Some of the employees are spending extra time at work to take classes being offered in the cafeteria of the company’s headquarters. Others, including some vice presidents, are being trained by tutors who come to their offices or are taking college courses.
In the hallways of the company’s headquarters, and out on the building’s grounds, it is not uncommon to hear employees practicing their new language skills.
Pirelli Armstrong officials say that it was their idea to start the program and that participation in the crash-language courses has been strictly voluntary.
“It’s our way of saying we like being part of the Pirelli organization,” said Jan Colella, employee relations manager at Pirelli Armstrong. “It was our idea. They (executives in Italy) said slow down, you don’t have to learn so fast,” she said.
While most of the people from the Pirelli Group in Milan, Italy, speak English, not all do so well, “so it is helpful if we can meet each other halfway sometimes,” Colella said.
About 15 employees have finished a beginner’s class and have moved on to the next level of instruction. Meanwhile, a second beginner’s class has also started. The classes are held 2 days a week, from 4 to 6 p.m., so that the employees are taught partly on their own time and partly on the company’s. The work day ends at 5.
At least seven management-level employees are learning Italian through the Berlitz method, including William Bruce, who is a vice president and corporate counsel. “It’s tough to go back to school after all these years,” said Bruce, who is 37. It’s even tougher, he said, to find the time for visits by a tutor and for studying.
