Businesses Encourage Employees to Learn Spanish

More employers, and many of their English-speaking workers, are showing an interest in learning Spanish customized to specific jobs, to help them communicate with Hispanic customers, suppliers or assistants. The trend isn't without controversy, as English-only proponents say it slows the assimilation of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. But others say teaching at least rudimentary workplace-Spanish skills is necessity in some industries and reflects the reality that many immigrants, including some of those here legally, don't have a good grasp of English. Roughly 32M people age 5 or older speak Spanish at home, and nearly half of these people say they don't speak English very well, according to Census Bureau figures. A retired real estate broker in Surprise, AZ, who owns rental properties and sits on the board of a homeowners association said let's face it: there are obvious demographic changes happening. She said it's wise to know what's going on. She and a dozen other Arizonans participated in a recent one-day "survival Spanish" session geared to apartment managers and others in real estate. Those who attended said an improved grasp of the language would help them do jobs better. A project coordinator for a condominium conversion in Chandler, AZ said he had situations where workers sprayed the wrong texture on the ceiling or where they didn't have the right type of safety equipment on. The manager of a west Phoenix apartment building said better language skills would help her communicate with some of her tenants. She said sometimes a tenant will hunt down a bilingual maintenance guy or bring in little kids to translate, but often they'll say it wrong.

Community colleges have taken a lead in teaching Spanish tailored to the workplace. For example, Phoenix College offers classes for workers in over a dozen fields, including nursing, banking, firefighting and corrections. The college's added more classes in recent years and has shifted the scope toward oral communication, faster results and more specific applications. The director of the school's custom training and education program said they used to have a general customer-service course, but now offer Spanish for auto-insurance reps, tax preparers and apartment managers.