Spanish-speaking county workers want extra pay

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001 | 9:35 a.m.

As more Hispanic families move to Clark County, more of them use the county's Department of Family and Youth Services -- and more English-speaking employees of the department turn to their Spanish-speaking colleagues to understand what these families need.

After years of complaining about the issue, Hispanic employees are pushing to obtain extra pay for translating, and they may be close to getting what they want. Officials from the union that represents the workers and the county are meeting during the next few weeks to iron out a deal before contract negotiations begin in January.

Henry Guiterrez and 28 other Hispanic employees at the department moved the issue forward by forming a group to obtain the pay raise earlier this year.

Guitterez, a 20-year veteran of the department, said he gets asked to translate for Hispanic families frequently.

"What often happens is Hispanic workers wind up hurrying to keep up with their own work because of the time they spend helping those who don't speak Spanish," he said.

A recent department survey shows that from one to three times a week nearly half of the staff sees families who don't speak English. Ninety-five percent of the families speak Spanish, and nearly 75 percent of the staff ask fellow workers to translate.

The survey also showed that only 12 percent of the staff speaks Spanish.

County Manager Thom Reilly began looking at a countywide approach to the translator compensation question soon after he took office at the end of July, and since then negotiations have been ongoing.

"I was aware of the problem before I took office, and have seen it in the state, county and university for 15 years," he said.

"Now we're looking into how this is dealt with elsewhere, and want to fix the problem on a countywide level, not just in this department," Reilly said.

The county manager approached the Services Employees Union about the issue shortly after taking office. In August, union officials gave Reilly a memorandum of understanding describing how the raise could be structured.

In October, the county floated a proposal to the union that would entail an $80 monthly raise for all county employees who are bilingual.

The union officials now are developing their own proposal and will meet with the county in the coming weeks, said Tom Beatty, union executive director.

The Hispanic employees are seeking a pay raise of 4 percent if they spend more than 10 percent of their working hours using Spanish and compensation time if they need to spend extra hours on their own cases after helping colleagues.

Guiterrez said that 4 percent for some of the employees in his group would be more like $208 a month. He called the county's proposal "chump change" in a recent memo.

"But many of us are about ready to accept any plan agreed on by the county and the union, since we've been waiting so long for this to get resolved."

Guiterrez said he and 32 fellow Hispanic employees at Family and Youth Services first approached management about the issue in March 1995.

"They said they understood our problem and felt for us -- but the issue never made it past contract negotiations. The union pushed harder for other issues."

Bilingual pay wasn't addressed again until January 2001, when department assistant director Fritz Reese met with a group of Hispanic employees. Since then, meetings have been held twice monthly to discuss bilingual pay and related concerns, such as Hispanic recruitment and promotion.

"Our city is a services industry city, and a lot of the people working in this industry are Hispanic," Reese said.

"It's a big problem when families come to us, and we can't communicate with them."

State employees have received a 5 percent pay raise if they use other languages for at least a decade -- including sign language.

Currently, Family and Youth Services has about 600 employees. The department handles juvenile justice, foster care and adoption and child protection. It will be adding 134 state employees during the next two years, some of whom already receive the 5 percent increase in pay.

The merging of state and county employees at Family and Youth Services could create some resentment from the Hispanic county employees who are using the same bilingual skills and not getting paid for it, Reese said.

Elsewhere in the county and city, other agencies are also dealing with bilingual pay. The Police Protective Association negotiated a $750 pay raise on July 20 for up to 100 bilingual Metro Police officers. The raise will take effect February 2002 and will be in effect for the next four years.

It is still unclear how a raise would be paid for and under what mechanism, or even how many county employees would qualify. Some sort of written or verbal test would determine the latter, said Ray Visconti, assistant human resources director for the county.

Nick Schram, the union's chief steward Family and Youth Services, said the issue should be resolved before the state-county merger is complete.