Understanding Comes With the Job

Alfredo Martinez couldn’t speak much English when he took a $4.25-an-hour job lifting heavy car wheels and components at Gene’s Plating Works.

Now, the 29-year-old immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, earns more than three times that as an assistant manager supervising dozens of workers.

English and job skills training provided by the company made the difference.

The training improved his life “big time,” Martinez said. “I wanted to improve my job here and my English . . . so I can be better than I was before.”

The training also is helping the company and a growing number of others hang onto employees in the midst of an acute shortage of skilled workers, particularly in manufacturing.

“The primary feedback coming from small firms is they need people who have basic skills in English. . . . That is a major deficiency,” said Linda Wong, director of Community Development Technologies Center’s Los Angeles Manufacturing Networks Initiative. The group is starting classes for employees at a handful of companies.

“In manufacturing, the overwhelming majority of employees in line positions tend to be from an immigrant background. Easily 70% or 80% of line workers are foreign-born,” she said.

By offering English instruction, a company can increase its work force’s skills and ability to perform a variety of jobs, said Bob Bishop of California Manufacturers Technology Center.

“The important thing for manufacturers is to keep the work force that they have,” he said. “In turn, the employees feel more empowered. They feel like they have more of a say in their job.”

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Gene’s Plating started its program after coming to the realization that “we had done a rotten job in communicating with and growing our own people,” co-owner Harry Levy said. “We had a very difficult time finding folks with the ability to supervise their contemporaries.”

So five years ago, the company began offering classes in basic English as a second language at the job site to groups of employees. An instructor from PUENTE Learning Center in Boyle Heights comes to the shop twice a week.

Margarita Padilla, PUENTE’s director of workplace language training, said she incorporates safety, technical vocabulary and information about the plating process into each two-hour lesson.

“Many of the gentlemen work outside of Gene’s Plating or work a second shift or work overtime, so they really can’t tap into normal public education,” Padilla said.

The strongest students in the basic class are placed in an advanced class. The “cream of that crop” graduate into a supervisor-training class provided by PUENTE, where they learn administrative and other aspects of higher-level jobs.

“We needed trained supervisors who could communicate to both Spanish-speaking-only people and management as well,” co-owner John Whitney said. “We have been very successful in developing a cadre of people to promote.”

Of 24 current supervisors, 15 came to Gene’s Plating with little or no English skills and were promoted through the program. Over the years, about 200 employees have taken the basic ESL classes.

A few companies offer Spanish classes for English-speaking supervisors, but “it’s not very common,” Bishop said. “Where it does happen, it’s done as a goodwill gesture.”

He said it is more practical to teach employees how to speak English because it will help them outside the shop. “They become more functional members of the society they live in,” Bishop said.

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English and job-skills training can lead to higher-paying jobs. Average hourly salaries range from $12.22 for primary metals work to $18.65 for industrial manufacturing of computer parts, economists said.

“After some training, you can earn a very, very good wage in this industry,” he said.

Wong’s organization plans to start a two-year pilot program next month geared toward employees making less than $28,000 a year.

Three manufacturing companies--in home furnishings, knitwear and food processing--have committed to reimbursing employees for 12 hours of work they miss during the training, she said.

“We will have 92 hours of very intensive vocational English as a second language combined with basic skills training, including math,” she said.

In the future, Wong said she hopes to establish joint efforts among small businesses, because firms of less than 50 employees often lack the resources or time to provide in-house training.

John Rooney, president of the Valley Economic Development Center, is trying to establish a consortium of agencies and foundations to help provide ESL classes.

The center recognized the need while matching unemployed workers with employers. Currently, non-English speakers are placed in classes provided by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“The challenge is most of the classes are large,” said Mario Matute, general manager of VEDC’s Workforce Development Initiative. “People are not learning as fast as we need them to learn to connect them with jobs.”

Administrators at the Los Angeles National Tooling and Machining Assn. Training Center in Norwalk are considering an English-language machining terminology class this summer.

“There’s varying equipment, measurements, instructions, procedures, blueprints. [Workers] may not know the terms in English,” administrator Phil McWilliams said.

Classes at NTMA’s Norwalk and Costa Mesa facilities are paid for by the state’s Employment Training Panel. The group recently broke ground for an Ontario center.

Levy said more such opportunities need to be in place.

“Without question, it’s sad to say, the public sector is not doing what needs to be done in training people,” he said. “Industry is going to have to assess its own needs.”

Gene’s Plating spends up to $15,000 a year on the classes, including paying employees for the two hours of work they miss per week while in class. The employees donate two hours of personal time.

“It’s paid enormous dividends. Our company has grown from a $7-million to a $21-million, $22-million company in the past five years,” Whitney said.

While a strong economy accounted for much of the growth, Levy said more English-speaking workers mean smoother shop operations. For example, he said, “workers’ compensation rates have dropped dramatically because we have been able to get them to understand and respond to the safety issues involved here.”

“It is difficult to evaluate the monetary [benefit],” Whitney said. “But I guarantee it is a significant factor in this company’s success.”