Hi everyone. My name is Juan Salazar and I work for Sodexo as a food service worker at Merrimack College.

I live in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It seems like the price of everything here goes up all the time. Everything goes up but the wages.

I bought a house with my brother so that I could have some stability. I like to be stable, have some peace of mind in my life. We bought the house for $265,000 but had to get an adjustable rate mortgage, which is what we could afford. We also brought in some tenants to be able to make the payments.

Things were working out okay until the economy really tanked. Lawrence has been depressed for a long time but this latest recession has really hurt. My brother lost his job and our tenants stopped paying rent and I had to dig into my savings to pay the mortgage. Then the adjustable rate started kicking in, making the payments go a lot higher. I burned through all my savings fast.

We had to sell the house. It sold for just $165,000. Now I rent a room from my cousin.

I make $13.47 an hour, which is a little bit more than most people at work. I have some more experience in the food business so I'm what's called a receiver. But I know every position, deli, grill, everything. I also have done interpretation from English to Spanish at safety meetings. I try to create a positive working environment for everybody.

I do the same thing outside of work. I volunteered as an auxiliary police officer for the city of Lawrence. For one year I did traffic control and crowd control. I responded to floods and accidents.

I'm an easy-going guy and I just want things to be better. At work, there's a lot of favoritism going on. People aren't treated with respect. They pick and chose who they want to treat better. The guy who used to do my job had someone to help him. I don't. I asked for help, but they say, 'we'll think about it." Then nothing happens.

It's been a frustrating year. The managers are just making decisions without analyzing. The managers are cutting a lot of hours, and then we just get bombed during the busy hours. They make promises over and over but things keep getting worse.

I'm going to France to raise these issues with Sodexo. I'm representing my coworkers, who are afraid of getting fired. I've been both a manager and an employee so I can see the whole picture. I want Sodexo to see the whole picture too.