Nineteen-year-old Anna Aranda knew the price of almost everything in Mario’s Discount Furniture after her month of working there.  For eleven hours a day, seven days a week, she rang up purchases and wrote them down. 50” plasmas? $1,099. Astoria couches? A steal at $1,400. But the one price tag Aranda will never forget, and the store’s biggest discount of all, was the one attached to herself:  “They didn’t pay me,” she says. “Nothing. Not even commissions.”  Aranda, a petite woman with a straight-at-you stare and a smile that emerges when she’s hard at work, recounts her version of her time at Mario’s while wiping glue off her fingers. She is busy building papier-mâché puppets for a May Day workers’ march in downtown New Haven; since quitting Mario’s, she works a part-time job that leaves her with time to volunteer. She found that her undocumented status made it difficult to procure another full-time position. She switches between Spanish and English as she recalls her frustrated attempts to get payment from Mario’s.  Like several others interviewed for this story, Aranda spoke through a translator.  “I started asking [my boss] about my money. He was like, ‘tomorrow’ and ‘tomorrow’ and ‘tomorrow.’” By the time she quit at the end of March, after four unpaid weeks on the job, Aranda realized that “tomorrow” would never come.

Diego Castillo worked part-time as a dishwasher at Cafe Goodfellas in New Haven for a month and a half before he gave up on receiving a paycheck. He also worked mornings at the drycleaner across the street from the restaurant during the same time period. The moment that his boss at the drycleaner heard his story, he picked up the phone, called across the street, and demanded justice for Castillo. The owners at Goodfellas refused.  Castillo did not know that others also had wage complaints against Cafe Goodfellas. Between 2008 and 2010, the Connecticut Department of Labor had received 10 complaints against the restaurant and had forced Goodfellas to pay a total of $9,527.51 in stolen wages.  For Neftali Palma, a perfect job involves dough and back kitchens, desserts and a good dinner. He is a pastry chef by training and has spent 25 years pursuing his passion at restaurants in Mexico and the United States.  “You make something in food and you make people happy,” Palma says. “When people come in the back and say, ‘This is the best meal of my life,’ that is my payback.” (click on link to read full story)