My name Blanca Pantoja. I’m a janitor at Dell in Silicon Valley. This year, Silicon Valley janitors fought for and won a new contract that will pay at least $15 an hour immediately with paid family medical.  More importantly, we won protections to prevent rape on the night shift. Janitors, who are mostly women, work in isolation, alone at night, and are mostly supervised by men. Rape is common in our work. These protections allow me to work with less fear. Now, just two months after ratifying our new, life-changing contract, Dell is getting rid of us in favor of a non-union contractor that pays $11 an hour with no benefits or protections.

I work hard and do an important job. I deserve respect and a fair wage. Keeping janitors with a union contract would cost Dell almost nothing, but for us, the difference is life changing. The new contract would have made a huge difference for my family and me. We fought hard for protections against sexual violence so we could work without constant fear. Dell’s new janitorial contractor does not provide these protections.

I’m a hard-working, single mom raising two teenagers in East Palo Alto. The cost of living is very high, so I share a three-bedroom home with three other families, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck.  Every day, I worry about my family’s future. Ever since my daughter started kindergarten, her teachers have told me that she is a gifted student. The other day she told me that she wants to go to college so that she won’t have to struggle like I did. It was heartbreaking. I hope that I can help her live her dream.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in Silicon Valley since I’ve been here, and the one that is most painful is the growing racial divide. Only 10% of employees that work at technology companies are black or Latino, but that number goes to over 60% for the workers that service these tech campuses. The average annual pay for technology worker is $113,000, while the average pay for a service worker is about $19,000. The result is that white people are thriving in Silicon Valley while black and brown people are struggling to make rent and feed their families.

My coworkers and I are all people of color, and now Dell has disposed of us, and the little we had, the same way we dispose of the trash in their buildings.  On their website, Dell claims to be building a “Legacy of Good” but forcing us to live in poverty is not the way to do that.

Please sign this petition to ask Dell to do what is right and retain us with the contract that we fought so hard for. Thank you.