Transcripts

KEN SALCHOW: If you can look down inside here, you'll see a blade that's going around. That's a saw blade. And what it's doing is taking this chicken and cutting it in half.

JEFF HORWITZ: Ken Salchow has to point out the circular blades that rotate so fast they seem to stand still. He's a production manager at Gold'n Plump Chicken. Chilled carcasses hit these blades and split like butter.

KEN SALCHOW: We do have shields and everything around the blades but they are very sharp. And that's why you need to explain to people that they don't go sticking their hands in them. It's very important that when you do the interpretation that they understand rules and regulations about shutting equipment off before you work on it.

JEFF HORWITZ: Nearly a quarter of the workers at the Cold Spring plant now speak primarily Spanish. Meat processing jobs have brought many Hispanic migrants to Minnesota. Some of these beef and chicken plants may be in the Vanguard of coping with the change. Others may be woefully behind.

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Through an interpreter, line worker Norma Gonzalez says she started work at Gold'n Plump four years ago. She moved from Mexico to join family members in the St. Cloud area.

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MARISA GUZMAN: Sometimes when she needs to talk about work, say something at work-- when they need to say something to their supervisor or their lead person-- when they need to talk, it's very good to have an interpreter.

JEFF HORWITZ: Gonzalez packages chicken parts by hand that drop out from a conveyor in front of her. Typically, she'll call for an interpreter when she runs out of chicken or packing materials. Marissa Guzman joined Gold'n Plump three years ago. Her boss drafted her as an on-call interpreter when they saw her helping out at company meetings.

MARISA GUZMAN: A lot of people would not really understand. So that's what I would do, explain what the person was talking about. And I got very familiar with that. That's why then they started asking me if I wanted to be an interpreter.

JEFF HORWITZ: In the past three years, the company has hired a bilingual employee relations manager. They've also developed an internal system that's trained around 20 interpreters. A certification process assures they'll abide by codes of ethics and confidentiality. The interpreters are drilled on complex medical terminology, important to know when workers' comp situations arise.

Professional interpreters and others say these measures are not necessarily the industry standard. Poor skills and conflicts of interest can create problems when companies recruit their own interpreters internally.

BILL PEARSON: Packing house work, for instance, is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

JEFF HORWITZ: Bill Pearson is president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. He's organized Hispanic workers in beef processing plants in the Twin Cities and in Long Prairie.

BILL PEARSON: In some cases, the employer will have someone go along with the injured worker who can translate. But there's a fear, obviously, in what is being communicated. Because the worker, if he speaks no English, doesn't have a clue what the person is telling the doctor or the nurse or whoever he's seeing exactly what the injured person is saying.

JEFF HORWITZ: Bilingual Department of Labor officials say they often receive calls from workers who don't trust company interpreters. But Marisa Guzman says Gold'n Plump employees come to interpreters even after work for help renting an apartment or taking a car for repairs. She says interpreters also become an example of success for other minority employees.

MARISA GUZMAN: If they see that we are trying to succeed here in the plant, for them, it's like, hey, we have people of our culture trying to better themselves. Why can't we do that?

JEFF HORWITZ: The human resource director says, for Gold'n Plump, the decision to invest in the Spanish language is a simple one. Happy, safe, less confused workers mean less turnover in jobs that otherwise change quickly. And less turnover is good for the bottom line. Jeff Horwitz, Minnesota Public Radio, Cold Spring.