The following stories, told to David Bacon, first appear in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online 10 June 2014

Cristina Lopez and her two sons. (Lopez’ name has been changed to protect her identity)

I first applied for a job at the Select agency in 2000.  I’d just arrived from Mexico, and a friend explained to me about the agencies, that they’ll quickly send you out to work.   They sent me to some other places before ACI.  Then I was out of work for awhile, and I went down to the agency to ask them for another job.  They said the only job they had for me was in the garbage. 
 
A lot of people had told me that this job was really bad.  The woman at the agency told me, go try it for a day, and if you don’t like it you can come back here.  So I went.  At first they put me on the cardboard line.  That didn’t seem so bad because it’s not so dirty.  It’s just that the cardboard stacks up so fast.  But then they put me on the trash line, which was a lot dirtier.  But the thing is, I needed the job.  So I worked hard, and the years passed, and I was still there.
 
All day every day the trucks arrive, they unload and a machine starts pushing the trash onto the line.  Down below, we start sorting it.  The line brings all the trash past the place we’re standing, and first we separate out the cardboard.  The next line takes out the plastic.  Then the metal and aluminum gets taken out on another line. 
 
The worst position — the one with the heaviest and dirtiest work — is the trash line.  It’s really ugly.  All the really terrible things are there.   Things like dirty diapers.  There are dangers too.  Broken glass. Rusty iron.
 
I got punctured twice by hypodermic needles, and they sent me to the hospital.  I was really scared, because you don’t know where the needles have been.  You could get HIV.  They kept checking my blood at a clinic in Castro Valley for eight months afterwards, for AIDS or hepatitis or other illnesses.
 
Afterwards Maria at the agency said the company had checked my papers and found out that they weren’t any good.  I wouldn’t be able to work anymore if I couldn’t give them new papers within a month.  I told her I wanted to see this in writing, and I’d take it to a lawyer before I signed anything.  I told her, “With the lousy wages you’re paying us, do you think you’re going to find people with good Social Security numbers?”
 
After the month was up they didn’t say anything.  I knew three people after that who were called into the office after they’d been punctured by a needle, and the company then checked their papers.  But they lost their jobs because they didn’t speak up the way I did.
 
The heaviest job is separating out the metal and taking it to the containers.  Once I was sorting on the line and a heavy piece of equipment fell on me.  It really hurt me bad, but they didn’t pay me anything for that or send me to the doctor or the hospital.  Last November I slipped and fell while I was putting a cylinder on the forklift, and it hit me in the stomach.  They didn’t do anything for me that time either.  They just sent me home. They always look for a way not to send you to the doctor when something happens. 
 
We don’t have any medical insurance. They tell us that because we work for the agency, we don’t have a right to this benefit or anything else.  No vacations.  Nothing.  They call us temporary workers because we work for the agency, but we’re not really temporary.  Many of us have been working at ACI for many years.  We are permanent workers there.  But ACI doesn’t have any of its own employees on the sorting lines.  Down there we all work for the agency. 
 
When I started at ACI they were paying me $8 an hour.  They made us work ten or twelve hours every day, standing in one place all that time.  If we got sick and asked for time off they’d deny it.  Every Saturday was mandatory.  If we stopped the line to get a drink of water because it was so hot they’d get angry. If we went to the bathroom, they’d look at their watch to see how much time we were taking.
 
Then in 2012 they started two shifts and raised the wages to $8.50 for nights and $8.30 for days.  I don’t think that’s a fair wage. The job is very heavy and the pay is really low.  In one safety meeting I asked them to give us a raise.  Then the manager yelled at me and called me a grossera because I said the company was greedy. Afterwards he told me I had to go apologize in the office. 
 
They’d yell at us and tell us to get out more production but they’d never raise the wages.  Our hands were hurting from what they already demanded. Once a woman said we’d go on strike and Brenda, the manager, said we’d all be fired if we did.  She said, there are four doors and they’re all open for anyone who doesn’t like it here. 
 
Then they decided to motivate us by giving us clocks as presents, but they didn’t work.  When I asked why they’d give us broken clocks the company was insulted, but I see better stuff in the trash.
 
Even though we were asking for raises, we never knew that San Leandro had a living wage law.  Of course they never said a thing about it.  They would just say, there’s not going to be any raise.  We learned about it when we talked with the union organizer, Agustin.  We decided to file a court case to force them to raise the wages.   We didn’t want to get fired – we wanted them to pay us better.
 
Then in February they began calling us in to say they’d started checking our papers.  They said la migra had checked our papers over a year earlier, but if that was really true, why did they wait until we’d filed the suit?  When I asked Monica, a manager, why, she said it was partly because we’d sued the company and partly because the company had been audited by la migra.   People have worked here for fourteen or fifteen years, and no one ever said anything to them before.  Now that we filed the suit, we’re getting fired. 
 
Since I got fired I’ve been very worried about my situation.  I can’t get hired and my sons lost their jobs in Los Angeles and came up to live with me.  My PG&E bill is very high,  $258.  The water bill came — $239.  The rent is $1250.  We’re all living in one room and renting out the others just to be able to pay it.
 
I’ve been here fourteen years, and it’s impossible for me to go back to Apatzingan, in Michoacan, where I was born. But I was never sorry I came.  I worked hard for three years, and brought my two sons.   I may not have a job right now, but I don’t regret anything.  I’m going to struggle, and continue moving ahead.