As the only Spanish-speaking staffer in his division, Dallas city employee Norman Herrera takes at least one call a day from a resident en espaÑol.
The questions range from where to pay a parking ticket to how to get trash pick up on a day other than Thursday.
“We get those calls in English all the time. When you get those in Spanish, you want to answer them,” said Herrera, a special assistant to the Dallas mayor. “If we can’t communicate with them… I don’t think we’re doing our job.”
Demand for bilingual employees like Herrera is growing across the U.S., at schools, hospitals, courthouses and other government offices, said Kevin Hendzel, spokesman for the American Translators Association. Many are recruiting and rewarding bilingual workers with extra pay.
The city of Austin, for example, will soon begin paying some employees an extra $150 a month if they speak Spanish or are fluent in sign language. Employees must work in a department where the languages are in demand and prove their abilities through testing.
“The point of the city government is to provide service to taxpayers, even if they speak another language,” said Ralph Goring, organizational development manager for Austin. “It just makes all the difference in the world when it comes to customer service.”
Federal rules require cities with large non-English speaking populations to offer language assistance. An executive order in 2000 began requiring agencies that get federal money to make sure programs and services are being provided to anyone with limited English skills.
Legislation gains favor
Since then, legislation favoring bilingualism has been gaining momentum. For example, New York has passed a law requiring hospital systems to have interpreters and California is limiting use of children as translators for their parents, Hendzel said.
“It’s basically a civil rights issue,” he said. “It’s been a long time in development.”
In Los Angeles police and firefighters receive bilingual premiums; Oakland requires some city workers dealing directly with the public to be bilingual and Phoenix covers the cost of employees’ language classes.
The extra pay a bilingual worker receives can vary, and is often linked to the specific language skills needed for the job.
In Dallas, bilingual employees receive stipends of $110 or $150 a month, depending their level of proficiency. San Antonio pays employees an additional $50 monthly if using a second language helps them perform their duties. The police department in Montgomery County, Maryland, offers its bilingual officers an extra $1,000 to $4,000 each year. And some state employees in Washington can earn an extra 5 percent of their base salary for their language skills.
“What happened is more of an evolution. It was our employees saying, ‘Wait a minute, this is valuable skill. We are doing skills we weren’t hired to perform’,” said Tim Welch, a spokesman for the Washington Federation of State Employees, a union that covers 38,000 workers.
About 4 percent of the U.S. population speaks little or no English, according to Census figures. And many may need help in their first language when doing anything from asking about their water bill to calling 911 for assistance.
While Spanish is the language most in demand, Chinese, Arabic and Russian speakers also are needed. From Washington state to Texas, agencies also rely on employees fluent in Korean, Kurdish, Vietnamese, and other languages, experts say.
It’s not uncommon for a person who doesn’t speak English to encounter a clerk in a government office trying to get a point across by talking so loud that everyone in the room hears the exchange.
Or imagine getting a parking citation, not being fluent in English and trying to contest the ticket or otherwise navigate the court system.
“In a very stressful situation, if you can’t speak the language, it can be extremely frightening to answer questions,” said Margaret Wright-Rogers, Dallas’ assistant director of personnel.
Although language assistance is required for some agencies, the federal mandate is unfunded.
Who pays≠
“Where the real struggle comes in is who pays for it. The patient, the state, the municipality≠,” said Hendzel, the spokesman for the translators group.
In the case of Austin, officials set aside $1 million this year to cover pay and testing for 600 city employees who likely will be eligible for bilingual bonuses. Dallas spends even more on stipends for nearly 1,000 of the city’s 12,500 employees.
“It’s been beneficial to be able to offer,” Wright-Rogers said of the incentive program, which began in 1987. “It’s been extremely positive for our city. We need to meet the needs of our community…while they’re becoming more proficient in English.”
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