This is the story of a service worker formerly employed at Stanford. When the pandemic hit, she was told not to come back to work and was left without an income.
I was cleaning a daycare where they would care for little kids. My experience, well, we’re going through a very difficult situation right now. My son doesn’t work right now, whereas he was working before. I’m not either. And we keep paying rent, they haven’t forgiven rent. The bills keep coming. The only one who is working right now – thank God – is my husband. We’re very tight on money because we pay the rent with his check. We have bills for the phone, the internet, cable, we have to eat, and other things.
The pandemic revealed the priorities of the employer too.
The only support I received was from when the students (Stanford Students for Worker’s Rights) fundraised and sent us $700.
When the company fired us, they weren’t going to pay us anything. They told us we could apply for unemployment, but we don’t qualify for unemployment – and the company knew that we wouldn’t qualify for it. Because the company doesn’t really support workers. It’s because they care more about us completing the work, but they don’t how the people are, what the person feels.
They usually also pay us to drive because the office is really far from the work sites, and so she said that we should do what we can – that we should get to the work site by foot, or however else we could.
And it’s like you feel discriminated against by them. That’s how they make each of us feel. That’s how they make you feel.
Silicon Valley Worker Stories Project 