Getting Organized:

Lessons to be Learned

Hildre Herrera

At the recent Chicago conference, I interviewed two people who are involved in interpreter representation. Jorge Carbajosa is a Cook County state court interpreter and one of the organizers of the Interpreters Working Group (IWG), a small group of interpreters organizing to attain professional representation in the Cook County state courts. In Cook County all interpreters are state employees. The working group is seeking to increase pay rates and define the position. "It has been a difficult and slow process," commented Mr. Carbajosa, referring to a two-year effort to coordinate the working group's participation in the Communication Workers of America Union, which is associated with The Translators and Interpreters Guild and has experience in other states, such as New Jersey.

Mr. Carbajosa suggests that other states take up similar efforts: " I recommend that all interpreters organize -- whether it is with the union or not, it does not matter. I recommend that interpreters raise professional standards and push for certification." He added, "Communication, information and knowledge are the keys to making a better living as an interpreter, being more professional and improving our working conditions." Mr. Carbajosa discussed the different options for working as an interpreter in Chicago: one option is part time, freelance employment; the second is becoming a court interpreter in Cook County, with a pre-requisite of attending a one-month training program, offered twice a year. The interpreter then becomes a state employee. For the rest of Illinois, interpreters can contact any of the courthouses which hire independent contractors. The pay, however, is quite low. Some interpreters work with private agencies, which pay more, but it is very difficult to make a living this way.

Rick Kissell, President of the Translators and Interpreters Guild, described the Guild's functions and activities. A labor union for freelance translators and interpreters, the Guild is a nationwide local of the newspaper guild which represents journalists and others working for newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Los Angeles Times. I asked him what the importance of the Guild is for interpreters. He replied, "Primarily it is the ability to have a voice at the workplace so you are not acting as a single individual dealing with a court administration. You have an organization behind you which behind it has the power of organized labor in the AFL-CIO."

I asked about what could be accomplished in states such as Hawaii, where there is no organization. "What I would do first of all," he said, "is talk to the Hawaii Newspaper Guild. There is a local of the journalists' union in Hawaii. They are sufficiently well-organized, they have an office, they have paid staff. It would be a situation similar to Chicago, where when the court interpreters in Cook County state courts decided to unionize, they went to the newspaper guild and were referred to the Chicago newspaper union. They started working with the professionals on staff here in Chicago, with their attorneys, and started examining their legal situation. They started talking to each other about their present employment status: were they independent contractors, were they employees? Did they want to change that? What was on people's minds? That is the first thing to do -- talk to each other, and find out what people would like to change about their jobs. If everyone is happy, then fine. But if there are things that are universally of concern, then they need to talk about what specifically they would like to change, and then talk to the newspaper guild. The Guild has translators as well as interpreters, we have people who work in the courts, in hospitals, at conferences, and we have people at different stages of their careers. We offer some entry programs. There is an e-mail list where people can ask questions. Plus there are the standard things that you need to offer, such as low-interest credit cards. Courts, as much as they would like to deny it, are political institutions. That means that at some level you need political power to influence that, and one of the groups in the society with that kind of power is organized labor."

For more information and updates about the Interpreters Working Group, see their website: http://communities.msn.com/CookCountyInterpreters/

For more information on how to join the Translators and Interpreters Guild, call 1-800-992-0367

[Hildre C. Herrera is a Spanish-English interpreter and translator as well as a language teacher who lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.]