Breaking Barriers
Remodelers who employ foreign-born workers and tradesmen are committed to solving the communication problem. Many promote English as a Second Language education.
“If they’re willing to take the class, we’re willing to pay for it,” says Matt Plaskoff, a remodeler and builder based in Los Angeles, adding that extending the offer doesn’t guarantee employees will pursue the education.
Jeff Bay, owner of Morningstar Development, also in Los Angeles, insists efforts to break down the language barrier must be made on both sides. “Where we are, if you’re in business and running work, if you don’t speak Spanish, you’re asking for a problem,” Bay says. Moreover, he adds, learning to communicate with workers in their language helps build rapport and engenders respect.
Plaskoff finds the same to be true. “The fact that I took the time to learn Spanish scored points” with Hispanic workers, he says. “They really respected that.”
Plaskoff’s staff includes both bilingual employees and limited-English proficiency Hispanics. “It’s really important to have someone on staff to communicate with the Spanish speakers,” he says. Even then, while a bilingual staff member can help convey general guidelines and company policies, “it’s the day-to-day, on-the-jobsite things where you might not have a bilingual speaker handy. That’s where the challenge is.
“When we’re talking about simple tasks,” Plaskoff says, “[supervisors] oftentimes expect the workers to understand, because they’re acting like they do.”
Plaskoff and others who have worked extensively with Hispanics often refer to the head nod, a signal of understanding that follows a supervisor’s request — whether or not the request was understood.
Cross cultural management experts say this habit can stem from either pride, unwillingness on the worker’s part to admit he doesn’t understand, or a culturally rooted aversion to offending superiors — a worker may fear causing offense by suggesting his supervisor did a poor job explaining the task in question.
Treasure Trove
Despite these challenges, remodelers who employ foreign-born workers report overwhelmingly positive experiences.
“I got amazing amounts of loyalty and work out of my crew,” Plaskoff says, echoing the sentiments of several peers. Like Plaskoff, many remodelers have found that immigrants, particularly those newer to the country, work harder and more willingly than the average American worker.
“They’ll kill themselves for you,” says Ramilios Osses, a Seattle remodeler and builder, of his Mexican carpenters. “Where they come from, they’ll make one hundredth of what they make here,” says Osses, a native Chilean who has lived in the United States for 27 years. “In some places in Mexico they make 60 pesos a day. That’s $6.”
Chisti, the think tank analyst, confirms that, generally speaking, the characterization of immigrants as exceptionally hard workers is accurate. Most new immigrants’ urgent need to establish themselves and begin earning money supercedes any particularity or hang up that might prevent them from committing all their energies to a job.
“When they arrive in this country,” Chisti says, “they don’t ask, ‘What do I want to do?’ They ask, ‘Where am I going to get a break? Where am I going to get my foothold?”
You’re Welcome
Remodeling columnist and industry observer Walt Stoeppelwerth says that inevitably, remodelers will have to follow the lead of the nation’s builders in reaching out to the foreign-born work force.
“The remodeling industry, in the next 10 years, is going to have to really look at and figure out where its workers are coming from.” Stoepplewerth advocates organized, large-scale training and recruitment programs like those offered by many local Home Builders’ Associations to improve the business and language skills of immigrants.
Stoepplewerth believes the trajectories of the remodeling industry and the nation’s foreign-born work force are bound to intertwine. At some companies, that convergence has already begun. Larry Weinberg’s BOWA Builders in McLean, Va., recruits heavily from the Washington, D.C.-metro area’s large and entrenched Hispanic communities.
“We have to embrace the Latin American population,” Weinberg says. “We talk about the labor shortage now; imagine if the Latin American population wasn’t there.”
Currently, 22 of 70 BOWA employees were born in Central or South America, including 40% of the field crew. Just five years ago, Weinberg says, less than 10% of the company’s employees were Latin American or Hispanic. Now, however, BOWA actively seeks workers in the Spanish-speaking community. The company has placed advertisements in Spanish-language newspapers and promotes in-house referrals with a reward system that offers up to $3,000 for a high referral count.
Although the recruitment push occurs company-wide, Weinberg says the degree of connectivity within the Spanish-speaking community is particularly valuable. Weinberg says BOWA has even begun recruiting, through his employees’ networks, from among workers not yet in the United States. Although tighter post-September 11 immigration regulations have complicated that effort, that it even appears viable indicates the strength of immigrant networks.
“It just makes good business sense,” Weinberg says.
Other remodelers have found success tapping into immigrant networks, as well. Sawhorse, an Atlanta company, learned inadvertently of immigrant communities’ networking efficiency after placing an ad in a Spanish-language newspaper.
“That brought us one employee who consequently brought us three or four more,” says Sawhorse president Carl Seville. “Their networks are very strong. We have three guys still with us who came from the original employee.”
Immigrant communities could almost be said to produce their own self-contained labor markets, Chisti says. Particularly within trades, he says, once an immigrant community carves out a niche, new immigrants resupply that niche, because that’s where they first find opportunity. That network effect leads to the prevalence of certain nationalities within particular trades. “Those niches provide [new immigrants] the first builtin network. Once the niches start, they get perpetuated.”
Plenty of companies emphasize recruitment programs; training that effort on a particular community is a logical next step.
But Weinberg says the heart of BOWA’s outreach is found in what the company offers Spanish-speaking workers. Most obvious is that the company is attempting to become entirely bilingual.
A card listing the company’s core values that every employee is required to carry is printed in both English and Spanish; posted announcements are printed in Spanish; and the company’s employee newsletter, though not translated in its entirety, includes a summary of its contents in Spanish, as well as a Spanish translation of Weinberg’s personal letter to employees.
Weinberg is even considering switching to a new 401(k) provider that offers Spanish-language program assistance and informational literature.
BOWA also offers to pay for language education, both English classes for Spanish speakers and Spanish classes for English-speaking supervisors. Weinberg is studying Spanish himself and on site visits, tries to converse with his Hispanic production workers in their native language.
“We want [our Spanish-speaking employees] to feel welcome, to feel that this is their company, too,” Weinberg says. “By going a few steps further, we can make them feel comfortable.”
BOWA project manager Willie Avilla emigrated from Guatemala in 1980. Avilla, who ran a remodeling company before joining BOWA, says the company’s outreach is working. Many of his Spanish-speaking coworkers were “attracted [to BOWA] by the fact that they treat Hispanics well.”
More significant, Avilla says, is that BOWA’s equitable treatment is not simply a hollow gesture. Avilla says the company’s eagerness to train and promote its Hispanic workers is genuine.
“They want to move you up the ladder; they don’t just want you stay in one place. It’s enticing. A lot of places, you get hired as a laborer, and you’ll never be anything but a laborer.”
Arturo Prieto emigrated from Peru in 1979. Hired on as a carpenter, he worked his way up through the ranks to become BOWA’s first Hispanic superintendent. “Companies that aren’t advancing Spanish-speakers into the management level are going to lose out,” he says. “They should look right now into the Latin community. It’s the engine of the construction industry.”