Aurora Villareal

Aurora Villareal left her native country of Honduras because of poor economic conditions. She came directly to Houston in search of a better way of life. She would soon find out that Houston would pose a bigger challenge than expected.

Aurora has lived in Houston since 1999 and worked as a janitor since 2001. Her original duties at the 1100 Louisiana building were to clean the bathrooms of 6 floors, while being paid $5.15 an hour.

After four years in the same building, Aurora has never received a raise or a bonus, but her job duties have increased to cleaning bathrooms on 7 floors in four hours. Completing each bathroom consists of cleaning the mirrors and walls, taking out the trash, mopping the floors, refilling toilet paper and cleaning the doors.

With two kids and a husband, Aurora struggles to make enough money to take care of necessities.

"I support a union because I would like to make more money to help my family," says Aurora. Working two part-time jobs to make the money equivalent to one full time job is hard for Aurora. "I am expected to do an 8-hours worth of work for 4 hours pay. It's not fair." She cleans in an office building in the early evening and the Toyota Center Sports Venue at night. She prefers working one full-time job with complete benefits. That also is her motivation to form a union.

Aurora is an avid supporter and spokesperson for the organizing effort because of the lack of respect that she and her co-workers receive on the job from their supervisors.