Making Sure Nothing Is Lost in Translation

—guest post by T.J. Acena, Local 328 community liaison and diversity/equity/inclusion committee chair—

 A little over one year ago, I was talking with one of our former AFSCME staff representatives and they mentioned that Local 328 did not have a copy of our contract in Spanish. That seemed ridiculous to me. In my years at OHSU as an employee, and through my work as a union steward, I have spoken with many members who speak English as a second — or third — language. I rarely saw union documents in other languages; the few times that I did, they only in Spanish. I decided to change this.

Translating documents, especially ones as long and complicated as our contract, is cost-prohibitive. So, I set a smaller goal. I would summarize our contract’s most essential articles, as well as create a document to welcome new employees to our union and explain how it works for translation. I initially hoped to translate these documents into five languages. We reached out to OHSU about this project and they agreed to split the cost of the contact translations, allowing us to double the number of languages* we could offer these documents in.

The effects of COVID-19 on OHSU — and all of us — slowed down the process, but eventually I got the documents drafted, edited, translated and formatted. The contract summary and “Welcome to AFSCME” documents are now found here on our website, and there is a prominent link on our homepage. We’ve also distributed these documents to unit stewards to have available for our members.

Having documents like these available in multiple languages empowers more members to learn their rights. This project was an important first step in making sure all people see themselves in our union. Local 328 will continue to work on circulating these documents amongst our represented employees. I hope that is the beginning of our union having additional important communications available in multiple languages.

*Amharic, Bosnian, Burmese, Oromo, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Ukrainian and Vietnamese