Dodge City ? Pedro Serrano says learning English has helped him climb the career ladder and become a supervisor at the Cargill beef processing plant here.

“Now, I can speak in two languages,” he said.

The unusual thing is who provided the lessons – his employer.

Hundreds of Cargill employees are learning English through classes provided by a company program started in 1993 in Shuyler, Neb. It expanded companywide in 2000.

“What we get are more engaged workers who are more productive,” said Ken Conkle, manager of the Dodge City plant.

About 85 percent of the 2,750 employees at the Dodge City plant are Spanish-speaking. With about a quarter of the workers leaving for other jobs each year, the company has to hire around 700 new employees a year – workers who are getting tougher to find.

Conkle says the ESL classes help with retention because it shows the employees their value to the company.

Cargill, based in suburban Minneapolis, employs 33,000 nationwide and 158,000 in 66 countries. The company had led efforts to reform immigration policies to make it easier to recruit and hire workers from Central and South America.

The company also wants to make it easier to hold on to the employees already here legally.

Conkle said evidence of the ESL program’s popularity is that enrollment, including both employees and adult members of their families, doubled last year from the year before.

Workers said the classes’ benefits aren’t just experienced on the job. Maria Ambriz, who started taking classes last year and has worked at the plant for four years, said there is a lot of value in being able to communicate with her children’s teachers and other people in the community.

“If you have to have your child translate for you to talk to the bank or the electric company or the teacher, it upsets the balance of the family,” she said. “It is hard, too, for your child to see you as the head of the family if he has to speak for you.”

Besides ESL classes, Cargill also pays tuition for employees who want to study for a GED or a college degree, or take the classes necessary to become a U.S. citizen.