NEW YORK -- Like many U.S. immigrants from China, Qian Ya Luo, a home-care aide in New York City, is literate in Chinese, with its thousands of characters, but is still learning English since coming to the United States several years ago. After training to become a home-care worker, she joined the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) Local 1199 and wanted to become more active in the union right away, but the language barrier kept her from the valuable leadership training lessons it offered its English-speaking members.

Enrolled in English language and citizenship classes through the union local, she decided she didn't want to wait until she fully mastered the language of her adopted country before volunteering with the union. So she and other Chinese-speaking members of Local 1199 who are still learning English petitioned for leadership training in their native language. Local 1199, which has 220,000 members, a large percent of them immigrants, then turned to the New York City extension office of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations for assistance, and lessons are now offered in Chinese.

"Language barriers shouldn't prevent members from taking an active role in their union," said Ken Margolies, a senior extension associate with Cornell ILR-New York. He and fellow extension faculty member Jessica Govea Thorbourne had years of experience designing materials and conducting workshops in leadership training for the local, but this was their first assignment to train its Chinese-speaking members and teach them to train others. "It was an enormous challenge," said Govea Thorbourne, "but it turned out to be enormously rewarding for everyone involved."

Working closely with Local 1199 Home Care Division organizer David Ho, who speaks Cantonese and Mandarin dialects of Chinese as well as English, Margolies and Govea Thorbourne spent eight months putting together two days of training, which they offered for the first time

earlier this year. Initiatives included a slide show on Local 1199 history and structure, exercises in understanding labor contracts, presentations on the union's benefit funds and discussions and exercises on the role of leaders, political action and one-on-one communications skills – all of it in Chinese.

In all, 10 Chinese-speaking members – some who also spoke English and some who did not – learned how to facilitate the leadership training of others. They went on to train 85 Chinese-speaking home-care workers who are union members.

"After day one, the Chinese facilitators met to review how the training sessions had gone," said Govea Thorbourne. "Qing Hua Meng, one of the 10 facilitators who helped design the training, rose and said: 'For the first time, I really feel like I am a part of my union and this country.' Then one by one they all rose to deliver similarly heartfelt testimonies. It was extremely moving to hear."

"Home-care workers perform an important function by caring for elderly or infirm people in their homes so they can live more independent lives and stay out of hospitals and nursing homes," said Margolies. "While the work is valuable to American society, the pay and status of the jobs are low here. In China, many of the facilitators were government officials, worked in the professions or ran businesses and have considerable talents that they no longer get to use. Their role in the training gave them an opportunity to apply their skills, creativity and energy and feel empowered in helping themselves and their co-workers."

The union leadership training in Chinese that Govea Thorbourne and Margolies developed will be used as a prototype for more such training for SEIU home-care workers who speak Russian, Creole and Spanish, the Cornell ILR extension associates said. For more information, contact Govea Thorbourne at (212) 340-2885 or jt78@cornell.edu .