Hispanics are now the largest minority in the United States. According to OSHA there are currently over 17 million Hispanics in the American workforce. Is the solid-waste industry making the most of what these workers have to offer?

By Penelope Grenoble O'Malley

Depending on what part of the country you're in, you're either seeing an influx of Hispanic workers or will be in the future. Some enter (and stay) as day laborers, doing the work Anglos aren't interested in. Some find work in collection as drivers, and a few work their way up to management.

But according to Don Shearer, vice president of research and analysis for Performance Strategies International in Arvada, CO, employers are generally not doing enough to maximize the potential of their Hispanic employees and keep them safe. According to OSHA, 18% of workers who died in the United States in 2002 were Hispanic. Evidence seems to indicate that although management's failure to communicate effectively with non-English speakers is partly responsible for death and injuries, labor practices in their home countries, where safety laws are far more lax than here, can also be a factor.

In Los Angeles, John Gulledge, head of the Solid Waste Management Department at Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, sees his Hispanic laborers as hard workers who do a good job and are "pleasant to work with." In Columbus, OH, at Rumpke Consolidated Companies Inc., OSHA compliance manager Jerry Peters says, "We love the Hispanic community because they show up for work; they never miss." In Charlotte, NC, Wayman Pearson, key business executive for the city's Solid Waste Services, is planning a campaign to recruit more Hispanic workers. "First," says Pearson, "they come to work. Second, they want to do the job, and they do it well."

Shearer thinks employers are short-changing themselves if they don't help Hispanic workers move up through the system, if they don't recognize not only the obvious communication challenges but also more subtle cultural differences—and if they don't train their Anglo workers to integrate with what is now this country's largest minority, which by 2050 will be account for over 22% of the US population. Two keys to success appear to be defining how Hispanic workers fit into your organization's long-term plans and establishing a work environment that is supportive and accounts for worker differences, while incorporating programs that help minimal- or non-English-speaking workers maximize their potential.

An informal national survey conducted for this article confirms what most industry observers already know: Hispanic workers are most prevalent in the West, the border states, and major urban centers across the United States, including the heartland. Less obvious is that whether they end up in the local MSW workforce is largely a function of the jobs available, what other unskilled workers might be competing for the same jobs [Anglo women and intellectually challenged workers work on Iowa's material recovery facility (MRF) sorting lines], and the degree to which the jobs they're competing for are seen as desirable by Anglos.

In Iowa, where the population is roughly 90% Anglo, Hispanics have gravitated to cities where they tend to find jobs in the meat-packing industry. Sara Bixby, director of South Central Iowa Solid Waste Agency in Tracy, IA, thinks Hispanic immigration is likely to increase and the solid-waste industry is "a logical next step. I don't see this happening so much on the disposal side," Bixby says, "because most of our landfills are still publicly owned and operated, which means these are government jobs, desirable because of their benefits and comparatively good wages."

Florida illustrates how community demographics can affect who shows up wanting work. Ana Wood, director of solid waste for Polk County Board of Commissions, has only three non-English-speaking workers, two Hispanic and one Asian. In Fort Myers, Richard Burke, vice president of Onyx Waste Services Eastern Region, says 30%­35% of his workforce—drivers and laborers (materials handlers and helpers on the back of trucks)—don't have English as their first language. "Our workforce looks a lot like our customer base," Burke says. "The majority of our workers can read and write in Spanish. English is typically a second language and it's strained." To even the playing field, Onyx has recruited bilingual supervisors, offers help in securing a commercial driver's license for workers who are qualified to become drivers, and provides safety and training materials in Spanish.

"This is a tough business," says Burke. "If you find somebody that's got the right attitude and the right work ethic, you want to keep them. And if that means getting video tapes in Spanish or bringing teachers in after three o'clock to help them with their language skills, then do it. If the guy comes to work every day and takes care of the customers and does it in a safe manner and doesn't tear up the equipment, don't let him leave over something like reading."

For his drivers, Burke uses Coaching the Safe Driver training materials from the National Solid Waste Management Association, where General Counsel David Biderman says the organization has not only increased the number of safety materials it offers but is also making them available in Spanish. "It's a live issue," Biderman says. "Given the changing dynamics, we had to create safety tools that can reach the workforce."

"Safety has nothing to do with ethnicity," Burke says. "It's an across-the-board company standard. It's just that here we've had to accommodate people who don't speak English in order to get the message across. I don't think it's impossible for someone to be a good driver if they're fluent in English, but it's certainly helpful. I want them to be able to read stop signs and road signs, to understand the basic rules of the road, to be able to read a customer route sheet and where we might give them specific information about hazards. We see this as a win-win. Word gets around that this is a good place to work, that the company is stretching to reach out and provide literature and training in ways they can understand, and we begin to attract better-qualified people."

Burke thinks bilingual supervisors are key. Right now it's English-speaking Hispanics who do everything from explaining job and safety requirements to company benefits. "Don't stint on this," Burke says. "We used an open position to fill it with a multilingual supervisor instead of adding to our overall headcount. Thirty-five percent of the workforce is going to be 50%—it's not going to go the other way." For the moment, Burke's multilingual supervisors have found a niche to help them move up the ladder, but he thinks Anglo workers will be more of an asset to their company if they acquire the skills to deal with non-English-speaking employees. His opinion is shared by Gulledge in Los Angeles. "I don't know that our HR people have made it a rating factor, but it's important to us. If you had two equally qualified people and one speaks Spanish and the other doesn't, it might be the tiebreaker if that person had to deal with Spanish-speaking workers."

"What Hispanics are doing," says Onyx Waste Services President and CEO Paul Jenks, "is entering the job market in a demographic area Anglos don't want to fill. In the waste industry very often we have hired by convenience. So-and-so's a good worker, so we hire her sister or cousin or friend. All of a sudden we have a large influx of Hispanic workers in our industry. We're at the beginning of the curve here. We're trying to get people ready as quickly as possible for promotion, and one way that we do that is by hiring Spanish-speaking supervisors. Fast forward two or three years and this process will happen primarily through promotion because Hispanics will have been fully assimilated into the workforce by then. Over time it will balance out. They'll learn English."

Language is the issue that comes up most often when managers talk about ethnicity. Shearer thinks too many managers go at it the wrong way by using outdated models previously used to bring illiterate Anglo workers up to speed. The key, says Shearer, is not teaching Hispanics English, but teaching Anglo supervisors to communicate in Spanish. "Strictly speaking," he says, "a supervisor doesn't need to know Spanish, but if he expects to get his crew's respect and be able to accomplish work in a much more expedient fashion, then in fact he does. What we found is that what Hispanics look for in a supervisor is good, strong leadership. They want to know what's expected of them and the standards by which their performance will be judged. This takes communication.

"Furthermore," Shearer continues, "there are far more programs available to teach Anglos Spanish than vice-versa, particularly given the difference in dialects among workers with different origins. Plus the style of learning is different. These people are what I call touchy-feely learners as opposed to rote learners. What all this adds up to is the cost to do this and get the results you expect is not worth it." Instead, he says, teach Anglos Spanish - "There's an entire range of courses available that are set up for the learning styles of Anglos, and your supervisors who learn Spanish will gain the respect of their workers." Or try what Shearer calls Spanglish, a combination that emphasizes terms basic to an industry.

Aside from learning how to communicate with their Spanish workers, Shearer emphasizes that Anglo employees and their managers need to understand Hispanic culture. "They don't operate as team members; they operate as a family. They take care of one another so that if one team member gets stuck, they'll take a couple of other guys over there to help him out to make sure that piece of the job gets done. Anglo workers look at it differently. They think, 'I'm going to get my piece of the job done and you should get your piece of the job done.' And if someone drops down on the job, management has to step in."

In Charlotte, Wayne Pearson agrees. "Hispanic workers work extremely well together. They seem to form natural teams. The irony is that I've spent thousands of dollars training high-involvement teams, and with Hispanics it seems to be natural." Although all Pearson's employees to date have been bilingual, he and other employees are currently learning Spanish. "We've also done some sensitivity training in my operations division to make sure our supervisors understand the Hispanic culture. This is important if you're going to go in this direction because there are things that we as Americans do naturally that offend them, such as immediately making eye contract. Americans consider making eye contact important, and we think that if Hispanics don't do this they're avoiding us. Early on the supervisors felt threatened by the culture, but with the importance of having good people to man our vehicles Š they want to hire more of them. They see them as people who show up and give us a good day's work."

From Columbus, OH, come two additional insights. First, many Hispanics who work at the bottom of the industry as laborers are not aiming for full-time, permanent employment and don't have expectations to move up through the system. Some are in the country illegally (another factor managers must take into consideration when hiring), and many are here without their families—Peters estimates 75%-80% of Rumpke's Hispanic workers are living communally with other workers—and they tend to move back and forth between the United States and their native countries.

"I asked our Hispanic workers if they didn't miss the privacy of a room of their own, and six out of seven said they never had that," Peters says. "They'd grown up in a family of five or six siblings who all lived in a two-bedroom house, so the way they live here is like being with their brothers and sisters. For employers this is a positive. I make the analogy of having a having a weight-lifting partner. Some days when one of them doesn't want to go to work, the rest of them remind him he has to pay his share of the rent."

Based on the standards in their own country, Hispanic workers may also be slow to understand the importance of safety procedures. "A lot of them think it's a big joke," Peters says. "You bring a guy over here who's maybe 50 and you tell him he has to lock out a machine, and he's going to tell you that slows everything down. You tell him he has to sit six hours in a training class, and he'll tell you that's six hours you could be working. So we not only have to teach them their job but also to wear their goggles and gloves. The worst mistake I've seen supervisors make is to talk down to them. I had to tell one supervisor, 'They're not deaf, they can hear you. They just don't understand.' "

To help their non-English-speaking employees understand, Rumpke has developed employee-training manuals and training programs in Spanish. At many jobs sites they have either hired interpreters to enhance direct communication with employees or brought in bilingual employees from other parts of the operation. The company uses bilingual signage and international symbols and purchased software to translate publications, although it has found this of limited usefulness because of the different dialects among a workforce that may include immigrants from Mexico, South America, and Spain.

The bulk of Rumpke's non-English-speaking employees are in the company's temporary workforce and are hired through an agency. They work mostly on the sorting line or occasionally on such small equipment as forklifts (they come with experience but the company trains them on its procedures) and on trucks during lawn and leaf-collection season. According to its contract, Rumpke stipulates what wages the temporary employees will be paid and requires the agency train for general job and safety requirements and to equip employees with hardhats, safety shoes, and reflective clothing—no shorts. If the employee will be doing work that is specialized, such as cleaning under a machine, the company does the additional training once the employee is on-site.

One of the problems with this temporary service arrangement, says Nancy Nevil, environmental waste services manager for the City of Plano, TX, is the agency is considered the employer and responsible for worker's compensation insurance, but the work is actually done at another company's site. "We do it this way because we don't need this kind of worker all year long. Plus there was the issue of worker's comp; we wanted to take the risk off us. But you have to be clear in your contract about who's responsible for the actual training as well as who's supervising the employee." Nevil reports the city developed an audio tape it supplies to the service agency, which plays it in the van as workers travel to the work site. The laborers are required to listen and sign off. Bilingual workers from the city go through a list of standard questions to make sure that the workers have listened to the tape and feel comfortable. These same individuals are available if any questions arise on the job. The system has been in place since 1991 and Nevil reports only three serious injuries among this part of the workforce. This low injury rate is also partly due, she thinks, to the fact that Hispanic workers are prepared for physical labor. "If Anglo workers were doing the same jobs, there would likely be more injuries."

Peters suggests the use of temporary workers will continue as companies search for ways to stay competitive. "It's much easier to put this type of worker on an open-ended assignment," he says. "You don't have to go through all the legal issues associated with separation or termination." In Los Angeles, where Spanish-speaking workers are a fixture of the community and the workforce, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts are beginning to view temporary laborers as a pool from which to select employees that can move up through the system. "We haven't implemented a program yet," Gulledge says, "but we've had several discussions about it because these are people who will potentially become full-time at some point. They're aware of the organization and we're aware of them. One of the things we've seen that makes it difficult is that to become permanent full-time they must complete testing, which many can't do because they can't read and write even in their language. We have talked about setting up some specific classes in our facility with the idea that if they are better educated, this not only benefits them but also us in the long run." Currently the Sanitation Districts has a program in which employees are reimbursed for the expense of taking outside classes, including English.

At the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts the path up is from day laborer to equipment operator to assistant superintendent to full superintendent. The route is similar in Monterey, CA, but having two unions on-site has complicated the equation. The Hispanics who work for the Monterey Waste Management District by and large come from among farmworker communities in the Salinas Valley. Many are women who aren't interested in speaking English, but several years ago they organized to secure benefits.

"Our workforce is easily half Hispanic," says Dave Myers, general manager of the Monterey Regional Waste Management District. "Once a month we have a general meeting and a special version of the meeting for Hispanic employees. We try to print as much of the information as possible in Spanish as well as English, and for a while we paid someone to teach our Hispanic workers English, but the classes weren't well attended. What it amounts to is that we don't promote them. They are kind of stuck at this low level. As the result of the union negotiations they get wage increases every year and health insurance and paid holidays and vacation and sick leave. But to be promoted the next step up to an operating engineer's position they've got to learn English and get their high school diploma or the equivalent in order to be promoted."

One problem, Myers says, is that these laborers belong to a service workers' union, which represents operating engineers, who have not shown much interest in promoting laborers below them. Myers also suggests that offering non-English speakers training in their native language may be self-defeating. "We had a MRF operator who fell through the cracks and got promoted. When he started having accidents we discovered that he had faked his ability to speak English. We told him he had to take classes to keep his position. Instead, he kept going to the Spanish-language meetings. Finally we had to let him go and he subsequently filed a claim to the state that he was discriminated against because he didn't speak English.

"The conclusion I've reached from this is it's best to hire people who are bilingual. I think if we had increased our wages and benefits sooner we wouldn't have the problems we have had with the union, and certainly not the expense we've had of translating everything into Spanish."

Shearer thinks managers get in a bind with their non-English-speaking employees because they don't plan ahead. "You start," he says, "with where you want to be in five years, what kind of a market share you want, what you want to be making. Next comes defining the kind of workforce you need to accomplish this. The MSW business has a cheap labor pool available to it; the question is what are you going to do with it. In other words you have to take a close look at what's coming in your doors and how you're going to activate the applicants' potential, which means first you have to develop a hiring profile. Then once you get them in-house, you have to have a system for how to handle them. You need to be able to identify who your good workers are, marking period after marking period. Then you approach these individuals, tell them you've recognized their potential and would like to give them an opportunity to be a boss because you think they've got a place in the company. Then you start giving them education in things like policies and procedures. Remember you're not going to teach them how to do their jobs because they already know that. They need to learn how to teach that job to somebody else. Then you give each of them a chance to run his crew, one or two days a week at first, then longer, then switch him to another crew. That way when there's a slot open he's ready."

Back in Florida, Ana Wood has already initiated some of what Shearer recommends. "Improving your workforce doesn't happen overnight," she says. "Everything we do to improve performance on any level, foreigners or not, requires time and an environment that is conducive to achieving these results. We do a lot of research with the University of Florida and regardless of what their rank is in my division, from the people who pick up litter to operators to engineers, everyone has an opportunity to work with the students and the professors. This encourages the environment that we want everyone to participate. Employees will rise to the level you set for them."

Wood, who is bilingual herself, set the goal that her workforce be state certified. "I have three non-English-speaking employees out of 53 people on my staff, but I also have employees who are American-born who do not read or write English at the level that would allow them to pass the certification test. So we set up a program to read the questions out loud to them. To bring all our workers up to speed we use written materials, we use videos, and we use one-on-one. Five years ago our workforce was less than 2% certified. Today 95% of my workforce is certified by the state."

John Abernethy, operations manager at the Sacramento County Department of Waste and Recycling, thinks these ideas about hiring and employee development can't come too soon. "With the technology being introduced into the industry, you have to be sensitive about who you hire and who you promote. Currently we're going to LNG trucks. Collection is more automated. We're putting cameras in trucks. And because of this we will not have as many opportunities for minorities."

Ten years ago Sacramento created the Pathways to Opportunity program, developed in conjunction with a local community college, which leads managers to an associate of arts degree. Sixty people have completed the program in the past five years, and its success has spun off another program designed to educate employees interested in promotion in what it takes to be a supervisor and how to develop the necessary skills. It also was developed with the local community college but offered in-house. "You have to look at the discrete units within your workforce," Abernethy says. "You have to look at what they're doing and what you expect of them. Then you have to define how you're going to train them and keep them trained. And it's well worth the investment in the long term. With the cost of a piece of landfill equipment at $750,000 a unit, collection trucks at $220,000 a unit, and with the liability if an employee gets in an accident, you can't afford not to have the best workforce possible."

"If you lose touch with who's working for you," says Shearer, "they you've lost touch with your business. And for good or bad, your workforce is going to change. If you don't get the most efficient people who are the most effective at what they do, then you're not going to be able to accomplish what you want."

Journalist Penelope Grenoble O'Malley is a frequent contributor to environmental publications.

MSW - September/October 2004