BY JULIE JASKOL
UCLA Today

As a child, Don Van Hiel visited his grandfather’s foundry and machine shop in South Gate and watched workers cast and shape metal with the centrifugal method that is Techni-Cast’s specialty.

Today as the third generation of his family to sit in the boss’ chair at Techni-Cast, Van Hiel now manages some of those very same workers. And after 20 to 30 years at Techni-Cast, some of these workers still didn’t speak English.

About 90% of Techni-Cast’s 90 employees are Spanish-speaking. This complicates life at the factory where work orders have to be translated for employees. And it complicates life for employees.

So Van Hiel arranged for UCLA Extension’s American Lan-guage Center to conduct classes in the company lunchroom between shifts. “It’s just something I wanted to do,” he said. “I thought it was important for them to have that opportunity. But as we got into it, I realized that it benefits us just as much.”

Extension’s curriculum closely integrates classroom lessons with life on the factory floor. So workers use company forms as their English texts and build a vocabulary of English words they can use every day on the job. At Techni-Cast, they even learned a new production strategy, tackled safety issues and practiced reading job process sheets — all in English.

The classes were free to Techni-Cast, thanks to UCLA Extension’s partnership with the Southeast Los Angeles County Workforce Investment Board, a private, nonprofit, one-stop center that works with state and federal funds to serve industries in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The classes are funded by the state Employment Training Panel, which, since 1983, has trained more than 400,000 California employees to help keep companies in California competitive with offshore or out-of-state companies.

But for lathe operator Mario Villanueva, the primary benefits are personal. “It’s easier [for me] to talk with my boss, and I can speak English with my son and daughter,” he said. “I love it. It’s improving my English. That’s why I want to learn more.”