Companies Feted for Encouraging Hispanic Women at Work

“LATINA Style magazine for the sixth year in a row has honored 50 U.S.-based companies it says are the best places of employment for Hispanic women.

At the February 8 event in Washington, representatives of several of the award-winning companies spoke about the importance of contributions by Hispanic women, and men, to their businesses. David Gonzales, of State Farm Insurance Companies of Bloomington, Illinois, said demographers convinced his company of the need to recruit Hispanics. “You need to understand what is happening out in the world,” he said.

It was not until 1970 that the government began asked citizens about their Hispanic origins in its decennial count, said Roberto R. Ramiriz of the Census Bureau. At that time, there were 10 million Hispanics in the United States. In 2005, there were 43 million Hispanics, making up a group that represented 14 percent of the U.S. population. By 2050, Hispanics are expected to make up almost 25 percent of the population.

Speaking of IBM Corporation’s interest in encouraging Hispanic women in the workplace, Ron Glover, a vice president at the company, said, “It’s the bottom line. If we can’t attract the talent we need, we are unable to deliver products the customers need.”

But he called on the audience, mostly professional women, to help solve a problem in educational attainment: the secondary-school dropout rate for Hispanics is almost double that for the population as a whole. Professionals should help Hispanic students directly and support scholarship funds so that the educational pipeline for engineers — for instance — includes more Hispanics, Glover said.

IBM has established mentoring programs for Hispanics in the communities where it has offices and within the company itself.

Magda Yrizarry, a vice president of Verizon Wireless, said her company works hard to attract Hispanic employees and utilize them to their full potential – offering them career development advice and opportunities to work in various departments. She said such efforts mean Verizon has workers capable of serving customers in the Spanish language. Verizon operates in markets in New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Florida, and Illinois – all states where Hispanic populations are concentrated.

Employees of the McDonald’s Corporation are offered English-as-a-second-language programs as well as Spanish-as-a-second-language programs, according to Marcia Vargas, a McDonald’s vice president. Workers gain the ability to communicate with each other, with customers and with suppliers. “Corporate America is absolutely concerned about this,” Vargas said. See related article.

McDonald’s was named the “company of the year” by LATINA Style. More than one-third of McDonald’s employees are Hispanic.

Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao communicated President George W. Bush’s “special affection and appreciation” to the Hispanic businesswomen in a keynote speech. She said Bush has appointed more Hispanics to his cabinet than any president in American history.

Representatives of the 50 companies that won awards were scheduled to attend a reception at the White House later in the day.

The full text of the list of companies receiving the awards is available on LATINA Style magazine’s Web site.”

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