Araceli Romero
Resurrection Medical Center
Chicago
Lack of Job Safety Leads Laundry Worker to Seek Union
Araceli Romero was born in Mexico and came to the United States 26 years ago, settling in Chicago. She began working for the massive industrial laundry at Resurrection Health Care’s flagship hospital, Resurrection Medical Center, in 1999. Given the shocking conditions inside that laundry—including incredibly high temperatures and dangerously stressful repetitive activities—it didn’t take much for Romero to make the decision to organize.
“I make $8.80 an hour and have to give back $220 a month so that my husband and my two children can have medical insurance,” she says. “While I clean the clothes and sheets of the sick, I can barely afford to get sick myself. In my department, the majority of us are immigrants from Mexico, Central America and Europe, and for this reason they treat us with no respect.”
Romero had been active in the Mexican student movement in Mexico in the 1970s but was still shocked by the anti-union response of her employer.
“Right now, my co-workers are afraid to say anything about our problems or organizing the union since they are afraid that management will retaliate against us. When I try to talk with them about how things could get better if we stay united and organize ourselves, they say things like: ‘Please, don’t talk to me, the supervisor is coming,’ ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ and ‘Can you guarantee me my job if I speak about the union?’”
“I am sad to say that, for me, working at the Resurrection laundry department can feel like being in Mexico did those 25 years ago.”
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