“Half my crew speaks Spanish. Does training count if it’s in English?” Not for the half who did not understand it. OSHA settled this in a memorandum of April 28, 2010, its Training Standards Policy Statement, and the core of it is one sentence: “An employer must instruct its employees using both a language and vocabulary that the employees can understand.”
The memo goes on: “For example, if an employee does not speak or comprehend English, instruction must be provided in a language the employee can understand. Similarly, if the employee’s vocabulary is limited, the training must account for that limitation.” And it closes the paperwork loophole: “If employees are not literate, telling them to read training materials will not satisfy the employer’s training obligation.”
Why OSHA reads every training rule this way
OSHA’s construction rules are full of the words “train” and “instruct.” The broadest is 29 CFR §1926.21(b)(2): “The employer shall instruct each employee in the recognition and avoidance of unsafe conditions and the regulations applicable to his work environment to control or eliminate any hazards or other exposure to illness or injury.” Specific rules add their own, such as the fall protection rule’s “training program for each employee who might be exposed to fall hazards” (§1926.503(a)(1)).
The 2010 memo says what those words mean: “the terms ‘train’ and ‘instruct,’ as well as other synonyms, mean to present information in a manner that employees receiving it are capable of understanding.” It covers every OSHA training requirement: “This position applies to all of the agency’s agriculture, construction, general industry, and maritime training requirements.”
There is one line in it that small contractors should read twice: “Employers are expected to realize that if they customarily need to communicate work instructions or otherwise workplace information to employees at a certain vocabulary level or in language other than English, they will also need to provide safety and health training to employees in the same manner.” If you tell a worker where to set up and what to cut in Spanish, his safety training is in Spanish too.
What an inspector checks
The memo tells compliance officers to look past the sign-in sheet. They are “responsible for checking and verifying that employers have provided training to employees,” and they “must check and verify that the training was provided in a format that the workers being trained could understand.” Where it fell short, they are to “document evidence of any barriers or impediments to understanding, as well as any other facts that would demonstrate that employees were unable to understand the training and apply it to their specific workplace conditions.”
Training records alone may not settle it: the memo tells officers to “look beyond any basic paper documentation,” and a worker who cannot explain the training in his own words is the kind of fact it tells them to write down. The memo says that if a reasonable person would conclude the training was not conveyed in a way the employees could understand, “the violation may be cited as serious if it is within the guidelines set out in the FOM,” OSHA’s Field Operations Manual; OSHA’s penalty page lists the maximum for a serious violation after January 15, 2026 as $16,550 per violation. That is a ceiling, not what every citation costs. OSHA at the Job Site covers what happens during a visit.
The numbers behind the rule
This is not a rare situation in the trades. CPWR, the construction research center, reported in its December 2024 data bulletin that the Hispanic share of the construction workforce “doubled from 16.5% to 34.0%” from 2000 to 2023. The three construction occupations with the highest share were “drywall installers (75.2%), roofers (63.9%), and painters (62.5%).” If you run a drywall, roofing or painting crew, the odds are that this rule is about your crew.
The injury numbers make the case. CPWR counted fatal injuries among Hispanic construction workers rising 107.1% from 2011 to 2022 (197 to 408), against 16.5% for non-Hispanic construction workers, and by 2022 Hispanic workers accounted for 37.5% of construction’s fatal work injuries. CPWR names likely causes, “including language barriers, cultural factors, immigration-related concerns, and the fact that they are more likely to work for small employers (e.g., fewer than 20 employees),” and adds that “there is often a lack of training material available in Spanish and fewer safety programs available in small construction businesses.” Across all industries, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 1,229 fatal work injuries to Hispanic or Latino workers in 2024, a rate of 4.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers against 3.3 for all workers.
Where to get training in Spanish
OSHA itself publishes much of what a small crew needs. Its Spanish-language compliance page lists publications by language, a “Construction eTool in Spanish,” “Standards in Spanish,” “Videos in Spanish,” “English/Spanish Dictionaries,” and Información Rápida, its Spanish-language newsletter. The Spanish publications list includes fact sheets and pocket cards on falls (“Una Hoja Informativa - Prevención Contra Caídas”), ladders, heat (“Trabaje de forma segura en el calor”), silica and trenching.
For a classroom course, OSHA’s Spanish-language outreach page sends anyone looking for outreach training in a language other than English to its “Find Classroom Trainers (all languages)” listing. Know what that course is and is not. OSHA says the Outreach Training Program “is a voluntary program and does not meet the training requirements for any OSHA standards,” and that “none of the courses within the Outreach Training Program is considered a certification.” A 10-hour card is a good start. It does not replace the job-specific training a rule like fall protection requires, which still has to be in a language the worker understands.
CPWR also publishes its materials in English and Spanish, and says it keeps a list of its translated resources, its “Lista de recursos en español.”
How to run training that lands
Say a roofer has six on the crew: three who prefer Spanish, two who prefer English and one who reads neither well. A plan that meets the memo might look like this:
The record that proves it
The fall protection rule asks for a written certification with “the name or other identity of the employee trained, the date(s) of the training, and the signature of the person who conducted the training or the signature of the employer” (§1926.503(b)(1)). Add three things the rule does not ask for but the 2010 memo makes worth having: the language the session was given in, the materials used, and a line that each worker showed the trainer what he learned. Keep the record with the employee’s file, so that if an inspector asks, you can show what was taught, how and in which language.
Good places to start are the rules with their own articles here: fall protection, ladders, heat and silica dust. Each of those articles names the rule; this one is about making sure the person on the roof understood it.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.