Language courses pay dividends for vineyard workers, businesses

Viticulturist Brian Calcagno relied, for the most part, on gestures and a handful of Spanish words he learned over the years to interact with workers at Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards.

'I could say a couple of words, point and show the task,' he said.

While that approach got the job done, he said it wasn't ideal. Now, his employer is trying to make it easier for him and other employees to communicate.

Sonoma-Cutrer hired Leonela Santiago, founder of the Santa Rosa-based Lingua Franca Academy, to teach Spanish before the start of the wine grape harvest. Calcagno was among the dozen or so employees, including accountants, operations managers and winemakers, to take the classes offered on-site at the vineyard near Windsor.

'I work mostly with Spanish-speaking people. (It's) out of necessity,' he said about participating.

Agricultural businesses and wine producers like Sonoma-Cutrer are trying to close the language gap in vineyards, warehouses and farms throughout the county. They're providing employees with on-site English and Spanish language courses, many of them free and held during work hours to encourage employees to attend.

The courses pay dividends outside the workplace, as well, with many employees reporting greater involvement in their children's education and in their communities.

Santiago, who launched her language business more than three years ago, also taught English to 15 other workers, most of them natives of Mexico, this summer at Sonoma-Cutrer. She said she'll resume both the English and Spanish classes when harvest season begins to wind down at the end of October. Employees are paid to attend the hourlong, once-a-week classes.

'It's really forward-thinking on their part,' Santiago said about the wine producer.

She said she first started teaching Spanish at the wine estate, focusing on industry-related vocabulary used in the vineyards and cellars. The program later expanded to include employees who needed to learn English, such as mechanic and truck driver Israel Villagomez.

The Santa Rosa resident said he often needs to pick up equipment parts for the vineyard. But he'd struggled to communicate with shop employees and resorted to pointing and hand signals. Since he started taking the classes two months ago, he said he no longer leans on gestures or others to translate. Instead, he uses the English that he's learned.

'I now jump right in,' he said, adding that he even asks his kids to speak to him in English.

The company wanted to give its employees an opportunity to share ideas and information without language barriers 'getting in the way,' according to Osmar Rivera, human-resources generalist at Sonoma-Cutrer. He said they have about 100 employees and most of the workers don't speak fluent English.

The classes go beyond providing wine-industry vocabulary in English and Spanish. They also focus on cultural awareness and sensitivity, he added.

'We wanted to really invest in their education and make sure they'll be able to communicate in the workplace,' Rivera said.

Productivity and worker morale surge when employees learn English and are able to talk to co-workers and others in the community, said Kelly Bass Seibel, workforce development director at the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce.

'It's definitely tied to morale,' she said, adding, 'Can you imagine going to work and not be able to communicate with workers?'

Six years ago, the chamber rolled out the Worksite Held Employee English Learning program, also known as WHEEL. A talk by Carl Wong, then-superintendent of Sonoma County schools, about the achievement gap that ESL students face sparked the idea for the program. School officials found parents of English-language learners weren't getting as involved at school as those of native speakers, Bass Seibel explained.

The chamber planned to work with businesses and their employees in hopes of changing that, she added.

'The kids in the schools today are our future,' she said.

The chamber first started out with a class at a manufacturing plant. The company quickly saw changes in its employees.

'They realized when they were offering these English classes that the productivity of the employees that were enrolled went up. The morale went up,' Bass Seibel said. 'Their communication went up. Their absenteeism went down. Their turnover went down.'

She said the chamber has since offered on-site language classes at roughly 60 businesses, including wineries, farms and manufacturing plants throughout the county. Most of the students are native Spanish-speakers — primarily from Mexico. However, she added, some also came from Central and South America, the African country of Eritrea, Laos and Cambodia.

Although local colleges and other organizations have offered adult ESL classes for years, Bass Seibel said people tend to feel more comfortable studying at work than rushing off to another site after the end of a long shift. Instructors also cover vocabulary specific to their jobs, she added.

The majority of the businesses cover the cost of the eight-week classes and don't pay employees for the hours they're in the class. However, she said some do offer bonuses and other incentives to encourage participation.

'The most successful classes are the ones that the employees are not on the clock. They have skin in the game,' said Bass Seibel, who added the program also offers other courses, for example, on budgeting and school involvement. It also connects employees to resources in the community that focus on preparing kids for kindergarten.

Bass Seibel said she expects the need for classes will continue to grow as more businesses see an increase in diversity and look to overcome the language barrier among employees. She hopes to one day offer Spanish-language classes, which she said some businesses have been requesting.

Napa Valley winemakers, vineyard managers and other industry professionals have been running to Josefina Adriance for the past two decades for Spanish lessons. About 90 percent of her customers work in the wine industry alongside Spanish speakers and want to be able to reach out to them, said the executive director of Spanish for Business.

Unable to find materials that dealt specifically with winemaking, she visited numerous wineries and vineyards in Spain to learn proper viticulture terminology and created her own manuals and dictionary, which she said are being used in wineries throughout the United States.

'Everyone realizes we need to do more to increase communication,' said Tim Tesconi, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau.

His staff teamed up with the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce to hold evening English-language classes for bureau members' employees. The classes were aimed at boosting worker safety and productivity, as well as improving their lives outside of work. Tesconi said businesses traditionally relied on bilingual vineyard and ranch managers to reach Spanish-speaking employees.

That's how it was done for the most part at Kendall-Jackson until about two years ago, when the company's president, Rick Tigner, pasted on a horseshoe mustache, cut and dyed his hair and went on CBS's hit show, 'Undercover Boss.' He posed as Jake Williams, a former grocery store worker from Plano, Texas, as he worked in the bottling line and out in the vineyard with the Spanish-speaking employees.

'Probably the one thing that came to me is we do have a communication gap between the English-speaking managers and Spanish-speaking employees,' Tigner said in a video interview after the filming of the show.

Minding the gap, he hired Sylvia Puentes.

She said she came in as a Spanish instructor but later helped staff develop a language program to promote inclusion and boost morale.

Classes are held on-site and on the clock between January and August when the workers aren't as busy, said Puentes, who teaches English and Spanish to foremen, winemakers, vineyard and bottling-line workers and managers. The company, which employs 1,200, also pays for self-guided learning programs.

'Our company is looking at what else we can do to keep our workers engaged, safe and promoted within,' Puentes said.

Jose Iniguez was promoted after roughly a year in Puentes' class. He went from a skilled cellar worker to a foreman.

'If I didn't know any English, I wouldn't have gotten where I am,' the Ukiah resident said, adding, 'There's an advantage to being bilingual.'

He needed the language to send emails and talk to supervisors and buyers, Iniguez said. But the benefits of learning English extend beyond the wine cellar, he added. He no longer needs someone to help make doctors' appointments, reach out to his children's teachers and ask questions at the supermarket.

'There's no need to ask for an interpreter,' he said.

Kendall-Jackson plans to continue to offer interpreters at trainings and send out memos and newsletters in Spanish, but fewer employees rely on them now, Puentes said. This year, she had 128 students enrolled in nine classes — six of them offered to English-language learners. She's seen an increase of about a dozen students compared to the previous year.

Classes are not mandatory, she said, adding that managers will refer workers if they feel it's critical for those employees to know the language or could result in a job promotion. She said she came across several workers in class with leadership skills and a good understanding of English but who were hesitant to speak it. She's focused on getting them to overcome their fear.

'The level of confidence of people has just blossomed,' she said.

Confidence also flourished for Alexander Valley resident Alex Zavala, who has worked for the past two decades with Ferrari-Carano vineyards. His employer didn't provide English classes, so he enrolled in the Nuevos Horizontes ('New Horizons') program at Alexander Valley School, where his children go.

Zavala, along with his wife, Adriana, studied there for three years. While he still remains a foreman at Ferrari-Carano, he said he was able to negotiate for a $1.25 hourly wage increase after demonstrating he acquired new language skills. He said he also obtained a license to drive commercial trucks. The test had to be done in English, he explained.

'I would have not done it without (English),' said Zavala, who's now able to skim the newspaper and read stories to his children before bedtime.

He plans to continue to take part in Nuevos Horizontes, which was started six years ago by local vineyard owner Lynn Horowitz.

She said she launched the free program, which provides child care, after noticing the two families that worked for her didn't speak English and couldn't help their kids with their studies.

The two intermediate and advanced classes, which have a total of about 30 students, focus on conversation and pronunciation and serve the Healdsburg area, she said. Husbands and wives often enroll together in the program, Horowitz added.

Watching their parents go to school after long work shifts has encouraged many kids to do better in school, said Alexander Valley School Principal Bob Raines, a supporter of the program. The parents, many who work in various vineyards in the area, became familiar with the school campus and ended up getting more involved with the school and their children's academics, he added.

'Their example is stronger than anything we can do at school,' Raines said.

A few miles west in downtown Healdsburg, Ruth Stadnik also is helping farmworkers learn to speak English and use computers as part of Santa Rosa Junior College's noncredit program, which she's been teaching for 13 years. While she gets students from all over the world, including Norway and Africa, she said the majority of the students are Spanish-speaking vineyard workers originally from Mexico.

Stadnik, whose family owns a vineyard in the Healdsburg area, said she gets about 20 to 30 workers in each class, but attendance tends to dip during harvest season. She's worked with local grape growers to advertise the classes to their employees.

Although most of the workers say they want to learn the language to communicate in the community and improve their lives, she said most of them later get promoted at work.

'When our adults get English and computer skills, they take off. They soar,' she said.

Helping their children was one of the reasons several Sonoma-Cutrer workers wanted to tackle English.

Not only did they want to learn the language to speak to bosses and co-workers without an interpreter, they also hoped to help their English-speaking children with homework and interact with their teachers.

'They're able to communicate more than before. They're more confident,' Santiago said about her students.

Calcagno said it's important to improve the communication between employees in the cellars and vineyards around the county.

'I can't believed it wasn't done sooner. … They're an integral part of the business,' he said about the Spanish-speaking vineyard workers.

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com.