You know, It's such a myth in this country now that if people work hard they can get
ahead. My parents worked hard but my parents were lucky. My parents were lucky that they
had all these opportunities in front of them. And I look at so many immigrants that come
to this country now who work just as hard, if not harder than my parents and they don't
have those opportunities.
Voice of Reporter: Veronica Mendez works with immigrants so they
can get a living wage. One of those immigrants she works with is Gerania Marta, a thirty
one year old mother of three. Just like Mendez' parents she is working hard. But she is going
to need either some luck, some help or both to make it in America. A few years ago, she
was working at Hot Stuff Foods making $7.25 an hour. A fellow co-worker and her noticed
that wages for hours they worked were missing. When they confronted their boss, he blamed
it on their language skills.
Voice of translator: Gerania says her boss told her that because they couldn't speak
English, he couldn't do anything about it. And, it wasn't his fault that the computers
were malfunctioning, thus robbing them of their hours. But, she has a babysitter who
watches her three children there at home. And if she's three hours late, she still
has to pay the babysitter for that time.
And she came to us initially with a problem at work, where her and her co-workers were,
they were being paid $7.25 an hour. People had been working there for eight years, never
seen a raise. They were having hours stolen from them. And she came in saying to me, " How
can you help me?"
Voice of Translator: Gerania says that the idea behind CTUL is that the workers themselves
make the decisions. They have their own power to fight back. They don't need to be defended
by lawyers or by others. They can help themselves. They can be empowered themselves. And they
can organize themselves.
And my response to her is, I can't do anything to help you. I can support you in developing
the tools that you need to be able to fight for yourself.
Voice of Reporter: Stories like Gerania's are all too common to Veronica Mendez, one
of the organizers working at Centro de Trababajadora en Unidos en la Lucha, which stands for workers
united in struggle, or CTUL.
As more and more workers like Gerania are reduced to contract labor instead of full
time employees with benefits and the ability to join unions, worker centers like CTUL make
it possible for those like her to have a voice. That's where Veronica Mendez finds her passion-
to help those folks who don't have a voice, help themselves.
And the mission of the organization really is to, is to organize workers that aren't
currently being organized by unions. So, we're a non-profit worker center. And we know that
over the last, you know, 50 to 100 years labor unions have gotten a lot weaker. And in great
part because the economy has changed. And employers have shipped a lot of jobs overseas.
And so a company like Target, or KMART or Sears, that once hired the workers directly
to clean their stores now began to contract with third party contractors, who would themselves
hire the workers. Um, and sort of take a nice chunk of change for themselves over every
hourly pay that those workers are getting for their own profits and their own overhead
and their own administrative costs. Um, so instead of those workers making a living wage
now those workers are making a lot less. And some of that extra wage is going in the shape
of profit to the third party contractor that they're hiring.
Sound of Protests: What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!
Voice of Reporter: Over the last three years, Veronica and other leaders at CTUL targeted
stores many retail cleaners said locked them in during their shifts, failed to pay them
their wages or didn't pay them for hours worked. Over the last five years, Veronica
and CTUL have helped employees at many companies recover over a million dollars in wages owed.
Veronica has an incredible sense of ethics. That, she just is very deeply driven um by
a core sense of values that really just comes through, that I think that the members of
CTUL just rally around. She's a great you know sort of leader for that reason. Um, but
I just have always found just sort of like effective at winning things but also just
driven by a sense of justice that needs to be done.
Voice of Veronica Mendez: So, our strategy was as a non-profit, we have the right to
organize differently. And so we organized demanding a code of conduct from the stores.
So, whichever cleaning contractor you have in your store, there's a certain set of
standards that it has to meet in terms of workers rights and that workers have a voice
in shaping that.
Voice of Reporter: Veronica is inspired by the workers she meets at CTUL, but she's
also inspired by her mother and father and her own upbringing in southern Minnesota.
Born to Peruvian parents who emigrated to Zumbrota, Minnesota 40 years ago with her
younger brother, she saw how hard they worked and how lucky her family was to be able to
provide opportunities for her. Her mother was an artist and founded the theatre company
Teatro Latino, which produced plays about the immigrant experience at that time.
Nowadays, with immigration policies considerably tighter and the opportunities for new immigrants
fewer, she sees the strain it places on families often working two and three jobs to make ends
meet. This gives her job and the work she does an urgency to help people have the same
opportunities she had.
When workers are working low-wage jobs, they very often have to have two jobs to be able
to make ends meet. So many people that are working here are taking care of their families
and also often immigrant folks are taking care of their families back home. Taking care
of parents that aren't able to work and taking care of children here. And, it costs
a lot of money. And if people are able, well so when people have to work two jobs, then
they're not able to spend time with their kids. They're not able to help their kids
with their homework. They're not able to make sure that their kids are eating healthy
foods, like it just, like it significantly impacts families and communities.
Voice of Reporter: Gerania Marta is someone that inspires Veronica to do the work she
does at CTUL. Gerania works incredibly hard to support her three kids after leaving her
husband. After her work experience she became an organizer herself at CTUL.
Voice of Translator: Gerania says that Veronica is a person who helped them prepare themselves
and helped them to lead themselves. She gave them leadership skills. Gerania says that's
really important for her because before organizing, before Veronica Mendez and CTUL, she was very
timid and very shy and conflict shy. She avoided problems. And now, she stands up for her own
rights and she became an organizer.
So in your workplace, you're scared too, right? But what would it feel like to stand
up? And so, drawing from people's personal experiences I think we can learn so much more
than if we come prepared to tell people, 'this is what you gotta do.' And so, I've learned
so much from her. And she has been such like an example to me of like courage and conviction
and determination. And she's just somebody I feel honored to work by her side as a leader
in this organization.