Different strokes

Tight labor market, surge in immigration bring new diversity to workplace

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Upstairs, in the Washington Hilton's grand ballroom, hundreds of lobbyists, publicists and journalists were converging for a gala awards dinner one recent evening. Downstairs, in the hotel's labyrinthine underground kitchen, hundreds of workers were getting ready, including eight gathered around a metal table preparing salads for the banquet. Working together in a brisk assembly line, placing vegetables on the plates and moving them onto rolling metal racks were Grace Appiah, of Ghana; Carl Jorgensen, of Bolivia; Ayad Al-Said, of Iraq; Robert Evans, an African-American born in Atlanta; and Keooudone Xaynhamad, of Laos. Austrian Herman Mueller, assistant executive chef, monitored their progress. Vietnamese immigrant Kim Nguyen used hand signals to show Sonia Vargas, a recent arrival from Bolivia who speaks no English, how to artistically splay slices of red and yellow pepper, tomato slices and California greens across the plate, leaving an open space for the dish's centerpiece, a phyllo dough basket filled with Gorgonzola cheese, caramelized onions and spinach. Nguyen, 40, shook her head as she wordlessly showed Vargas, 22, how to arrange the salad greens on the plates. "Sometimes it's difficult because they don't speak much English," Nguyen said, speaking with her own heavy accent. A tight labor market and a recent surge in immigration have created rapid changes in many workplaces around the country. For while people often find ways to cluster with others like themselves at home, in their neighborhoods, at worship and at school, the need to make a living forces people from widely varied backgrounds to get along day after day. The result is an American workplace that in some cases resembles a modern-day Tower of Babel, presenting multiple opportunities for miscommunication and misunderstanding, as people seek to work together across steep barriers of language, culture, gender and economic class, and racial, educational and religious differences. Female managers supervise men who come from countries where women's activities are restricted; high school dropouts instruct former college professors; immigrants who speak only Spanish work alongside those who speak only Vietnamese; Bosnians work alongside Serbs. Along with the inevitable conflicts, many managers and workers interviewed described how this new diversity also yields occasions of laughter, learning and creativity among people from different worlds. "It's surprising how well things work," said Tom Meyer, vice president of restaurant development for Clyde's Restaurant Group, which employs about 1,400 people, more than a third of whom are immigrants. "The level of tolerance is quite remarkable. There's a real spirit of helping. People have a common goal." The change has been particularly dramatic in the hotel and restaurant business, which relies on a steady stream of able-bodied, low-wage workers. William Edwards, general manager at the Hilton, recalled that when he was hired there as a dishwasher in 1971 after a stint in the military, there were three main groups -- white, black and Hispanics. Almost all the managers were white men, with names like "Jones, Edwards and Smith," he recalled, and there were only two languages at work, English and Spanish. Now, the workers at the Hilton speak at least 36 languages, and some speak no English at all. To communicate with the staff, Edwards has memos translated into five languages and read aloud to workers who are illiterate. It's a different world for supervisors, he said, and requires them to manage in entirely new ways. "Just set aside what business schools teach -- the MBA in finance or computer literacy," said Edwards, whose staff is 65 percent foreign-born. "If you don't have empathy and aren't able to communicate in diversity, or are uncomfortable around a multicultural work force, or if you are not confident enough to give an opportunity to someone who has a heavy accent or is different, you'll be a miserable failure as a manager." Workers describe much bigger personal challenges as they cope with the shock of a new culture. "I told my wife that when we came here it was like we had to be born anew," said Hilton steward coordinator Emilio Paulino, who moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic five years ago. "We had to learn to walk, to speak and to eat" in the American way, he said. Each day brings new dilemmas, such as how to handle religious differences. At the Hilton, for example, a growing contingent are Moslem women. Celene Castellucci, the hotel's assistant director of housekeeping, said the Moslem workers complained that it was very difficult to take their normal lunch break in the employee cafeteria, surrounded by food smells, during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when Moslems fast from sunup to sundown. They asked her if during Ramadan they could instead work through lunch and leave earlier. Castellucci agreed, and the women were pleased. But, Castellucci said, she later caught some flak for her decision from fellow managers who said other workers would try to take advantage of the situation. "Any time you do something in a union house, there's a danger of setting a precedent," she said. Other hotels have found creative solutions to different workers' needs. At Host Marriott Services Corp. headquarters in Bethesda, Md., for example, a separate room has been set aside for Moslem employees who need a private setting to place their prayer rugs when they pray to Mecca several times each day. At other times, the space doubles as a lactation room for working mothers who breast-feed their infants and need a place to privately express milk. "It's a dual-purpose room," said Donna Klein, vice president of work force effectiveness at Marriott, explaining how co-workers post a schedule to let people know when it is breast-pumping time and when it is prayer time. Language, of course, is the biggest potential barrier. Many workers cross the hurdle in ingenious ways. Some rely on guesswork. Hilton seamstress Lenora Ward, an African-American from North Carolina, for example, dispenses and alters uniforms for employees, But many of the workers come from countries where measurements are taken differently and they can't tell her what size they wear. So Ward looks them up and down and tries to gauge it on her own. "I can usually guess," she said. Sometimes workers rely on the sense of touch. The Hilton's Castellucci recalled trying to express her condolences to an employee from Bosnia whose son had just been killed in the fighting there. "I tried to say I was sorry," Castellucci said. "She grabbed my arms. She had tears in her eyes. We understood each other, although she didn't speak a word of English." Gesturing is common, often accompanied by a single word or two of broken English, many workers and supervisors said. "Our supervisor doesn't know much English, but when he points at a can and says 'trash,' they know what he wants them to do," Paulino said. Some miscommunications are tragic. At a Marriott hotel in Los Angeles, a well-liked and diligent Spanish-speaking housekeeper retired after 25 years, Klein said. On her last day, she asked the manager when she would receive her first pension check. But it had never been adequately explained to her in Spanish that the chain's retirement system required her to voluntarily invest in the company's profit-sharing plan, Klein said. "They were heartbroken," Klein said.

Copyright 1999
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