A couple of days ago, the WaPo took a look at improving workplace relations between Koreans and Hispanics in the Washington DC area. Give it a read — here’s just the intro:
At Korean-owned Super H Mart in Fairfax, where Hispanic workers bag groceries and Korean employees run the tills, a window into the increasingly diverse and complex business landscape of the Washington region can be seen through the store’s 10 Rules For A Happy Workplace.
Among them: No rude language toward non-Korean staff. No touching or pointing — a rule aimed at Hispanic workers. When at a communication standoff, call the company’s hotline for a translation in Spanish or Korean.
The rules, posted on signs around the supermarket in Spanish and Korean, have helped ease sometimes tense relations between the 70 Hispanic and 35 Korean employees, brought together even as cultures and languages separate them.
In this region’s booming economy, where Koreans own about 10,000 businesses, including dry cleaners, liquor stores and grocers, and Hispanics make up one of the region’s largest labor pools, the two fast-growing groups have forged an unexpected although uneasy economic alliance.
(HT to reader)
4 Comments
Reminds me of a story from the LA TIMES about five years ago.
At the Korean-owned market in Koreatown in L.A. where I shopped, the workers in the produce section were Hispanic men and the cashiers were Korean women.
One day a Korean cashier caught a Hispanic co-worker checking her out from the produce section. She went back to helping customers and forgot about it. A short time later, she heard a guy behind her complimenting her in fluent Korean. She turned around to find that it was the same Hispanic guy.
Long story short, they dated, got over her father’s objections, married, and had a baby.
They were the centerpiece of the LA TIMES article, which was on the changing ethnic makeup of the LA workplace, with an focus on Hispanics and Koreans working together.
Cute story and cute couple, too.
Yep, we Koreans in LA use tons of Latino labor. It’s cheap and they work hard. Also, Korean employers tend to be less concerned with “legal status.”
You’d be suprised how many of them know fluent Korean too… It’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t suprise me anymore when they do address me in Korean. Then again, a lot of Koreans do know at least basic Spanish phrases…
I’ve been to Faifax (actually stayed at the Residence Inn in Vienna) and that very store (roughly end of January, beginning of February). Maybe I just picked the wrong time; but during the hour we were shopping, we saw few non-Koreans and no non-Korean employees…
Mind you, I was there at about 8-9PM; but there wasn’t a lot of what one might call “diversity”…
Hmmm… Maybe that was during the time when the “document-challenged guest-workers” were at their Winter homes?
Mexicans, tonight we dine…in San Diego.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qKD-Ph7ds
Taco Bell’s fare baffles Mexicans
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ll100.html