Jari Berg recruits members across language barriers: “Don’t be afraid to speak English”

JARI BERG

Chief shop steward and occu­pa­tio­nal safety representative
Skaala IFN Oy
Kauhava

“When I star­ted working at the factory just under twenty years ago, you could really only hear Finnish and Esto­nian here with a bit of Russian thrown in. Today, the number of langua­ges spoken is much higher. The situa­tion in Ukraine is evident by the fact that Ukrai­nian refu­gees have come to work here. The single largest group is probably Roma­nians. Just recently, for example, six Roma­nians were hired as produc­tion workers. Most of them have joined the Industrial Union.

I think it’s a good thing that the emplo­yer has began to arrange Finnish language cour­ses in coope­ra­tion with educa­tion provi­der Sedu. The trai­ning focuses on the voca­bu­lary requi­red in our work. The teac­hers come to the factory, allowing us to hold the volun­tary trai­ning at work during working hours. The course was popu­lar, and more such trai­ning will be orga­ni­sed in the future.

It would be very help­ful as a shop steward to speak five or six langua­ges. So far, I’ve mana­ged with Finnish, English and some kind of sign language. In fact, some of our foreign emplo­yees are more fluent in Finnish than English. Recently, I went to tell two Burmese emplo­yees about the union in English, but they respon­ded by saying they unders­tand Finnish better.

The teac­hers came here to the factory, allowing us to hold the language course at work during working hours.

Still, the fact is that English is usually the first common language in the workplace and you shouldn’t be afraid to speak English. I also had a long break when I didn’t speak English at all, but when I star­ted using the language more, the basics learnt in school star­ted to come back to me.

If you’re wonde­ring about the meaning of a word and you don’t know the answer, then instead of trying to make somet­hing up, go on the compu­ter to check that you’re using the right word correctly. That will save you from quite a few problems. If possible, always check the auto­ma­tic trans­la­tions made with Google’s trans­la­tor. One time, I trans­la­ted a text in Russian and asked my collea­gue Oksana if she could check the trans­la­tion. I got the text back full of red ink and ques­tion marks. We then went over the text toget­her one line at a time.

In a crisis, the impor­tance of being able to commu­nicate and unders­tand each other is even grea­ter. For example, applica­tions for strike subsi­dies during the strike and earnings-rela­ted unemplo­y­ment allowance during layoffs have taken up a lot of resources. The union is fairly well aware of the langua­ges spoken in diffe­rent workplaces. That’s why it would be smart to share infor­ma­tion in other langua­ges spoken by members, too, instead of only in Finnish, Swedish and English.”

Read the article in Finnish!