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!