Des Moines Register
05-04-06
Bosses learn Spanish to boost construction site safety
Survey finds language barriers hurt health, progress
By WILLIAM PETROSKI
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Ames, Ia.
— Antonio Garcia spends winters in his native Mexico. The rest of the year, he works in Iowa, laying concrete for Manatt's Inc., one of Iowa's biggest construction companies.
Speaking in Spanish, Garcia explained that he likes Manatt's and makes good money. When asked how much he talks with his English-speaking supervisors, he said, "Poquito," meaning very little. Mostly, Garcia relies upon bilingual coworkers to translate for him.
Some of Garcia's American supervisors are trying to improve communications with the growing number of Latino construction workers in Iowa.
The supervisors have taken Spanish-language survival training developed by
Iowa State University to improve job safety for Latino construction workers, who have higher than average rates for on-the-job accidents and fatalities nationwide.
Spanish-speaking construction workers can take a similar survival course in
English.
"I am not fluent in Spanish by any means, but every year I get a little better," said
Matt Triggs, a concrete superintendent for Manatt's in Ames who has participated in the ISU program. "I want our guys to know that I respect them. When we put a good effort into it, they will help us learn and they will learn English themselves."
The Iowa Department of Transportation has provided about $270,000 to ISU's
Center for Transportation Education and Research over the past four years to develop and provide training aimed at overcoming language barriers in the construction industry. ISU researchers surveyed American supervisors and
Latino craft workers at more than a dozen Iowa construction companies.
Their study found that language differences affect workplace safety and productivity. In addition, most Latino laborers have less than a high school education and may not have the literacy skills needed to understand training materials.
A survey of 38 Iowa construction supervisors found that 62 percent reported construction-related accidents within their Latino crews. The most common

injuries ranged from cuts and smashed fingers and toes, to being struck by an object.
A survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2003, 791 Latino workers were fatally injured in all types of workplaces nationwide. The rate of 4.5 percent fatalities per 100,000 workers for Latinos was 13 percent higher than the rate for all workers.
The construction industry, which uses heavy machinery in often difficult working conditions, had the highest number of work-related fatalities among all industry sectors.
Iowa had 76 workplace deaths in 2003, including five in the construction industry, with all victims described as "white, non-Hispanic" persons, a federal report showed.
Iowa's Latino population has grown dramatically from 32,647 in 1990 to 104,119 in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Last summer, there were 607
Latinos working for private contractors on DOT road construction projects, about twice as many as five years ago, said Craig Russell, a DOT contracts administrator. Latinos are drawn to the construction industry by good wages, which averaged $14.43 per hour for construction laborers last year, state records show.
Carlos Perez, 20, of Marshalltown, has worked the past three years in Iowa as a construction laborer. He's married and has a baby daughter. He rises at 5 a.m. daily to drive to Ames to work for Manatt's. His mother works at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Marshalltown.
"It's nice working outside. Working inside a building isn't my type," said Perez, who came to the United States from Mexico about six years ago.
Engineering professor Edward Jaselskis, a principal investigator for the ISU study, gained experience with Spanish-speaking workers while employed at a coal mine in Colombia. He said the initial phase of his work at ISU was aimed at teaching Latino construction workers about Iowa's culture and language.
"Then we realized that in order for this integration to work, we had to work with
American supervisors, to teach them a little bit of Spanish and to continue working with Hispanics and to teach them 'survival English.' We had to teach both sides about the cultural differences between Americans and Hispanics,"
Jaselskis said.
Four Spanish-speaking graduate students have provided the training - both in classrooms and at construction job sites - to between 200 and 250 Latino workers and American supervisors, as well as DOT construction inspectors. The

Associated General Contractors of Iowa helps to coordinate the training.
It's not uncommon for Spanish-speaking construction workers who take the classes to figure out the safety problems that they didn't understand previously but that English-speaking supervisors took for granted, said Fernando "Freddie"
Aveiga, an ISU graduate student from Quito, Ecuador, who has been a training instructor.
Many Iowa construction crews have bilingual Latinos who help translate into
Spanish the daily tasks required for construction workers who don't speak
English.
Manatt's crew in Ames includes some Latinos who speak English well, such as
Ricardo Mora, 30, originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, who has lived in
Marshalltown since 1992. These bilingual workers particularly assist Spanishspeaking workers who come to Iowa from Mexico each spring to work on construction jobs.
Mora was working recently at a commercial/residential complex on Ames' west side, where Manatt's was installing concrete sidewalks. When he is with coworkers from Mexico, "I am definitely speaking Spanish," he said. But when he has an American supervisor next to him, he sticks with English.
Mora began working in the construction industry four years ago after being employed in the meatpacking business. When he first came to the United States, he said, he spoke only Spanish.
"But I am the kind of person who thinks that if I am going to live here, I have to learn the language. So I went to school and learned English," Mora said.