By Eduardo Porter
Martha Bonilla is not your typical middle-class worker. And it’s not just that she was born in a backwater of El Salvador and crossed Mexico hidden among a pile of bananas in the back of a truck to make her way illegally into the United States at age 20.
Like millions of Americans lacking a college degree, the 44-year-old mother of three works on the bottom rungs of the service sector, in a kitchen run by the food-service contractor Restaurant Associates in Cambridge, Mass. Food preparation and service is the lowest-paid occupational group in the economy; even in Boston, it typically pays less than $27,000 for a full-time, year-round job.
Yet there Ms. Bonilla sits at her kitchen table in the solidly middle-class neighborhood of West Roxbury. She and her husband, Felipe Villatoro, both legal residents, bought the house 12 years ago for $350,000. It’s their second; she rents the first to members of her extended family. The vacations in Florida, the 401(k), the $1,700 a month they pay for their daughter’s college tuition and fees — all speak of America’s dream.
“Coming to the United States was the best decision I ever made,” Ms. Bonilla said.
What’s the trick? Ms. Bonilla’s job with Restaurant Associates is to make breakfast and lunch for executives pursuing extension courses at Harvard Business School. At the university, service workers on the payroll of an outside contractor earn the same pay and benefits they would get as direct university employees — including health insurance and pension benefits, paid vacation and child care assistance.
For more read the full of article at The Nytimes
