I was born in Ecuador in 1975. I’ve been in Britain for eight years now. For my first job in London I cleaned offices from 4am to 7am and then worked at a hotel from 8am until 10pm. I did that for three months before I managed to bring my daughter to London. I decided to find a job with less hours and found work at Topshop on Oxford Street. But I had problems with Britannia, the company contracted to clean the store. A supervisor was bullying me, and when I confronted him he told me women are only here for having children and called me a donkey. When I argued back he got enraged and kicked a bucket at me.

A colleague told me about a lawyer named Petros Elia from United Voices of the World (UVW), a trade union that represents migrant and precarious workers. I called him and for the first time I felt somebody was listening. I’d had bad experiences with other unions, who told me I would have to wait six months for them to take my case or that there wasn’t anything more I could do. Petros told me something could be done. In that moment I realised yes, there is hope.

After being on sick leave for seven months due to depression, I returned to work. My old supervisor started to harass me again, but this time I wasn’t alone; I was in the union. I told Petros what was going on and we sent them a letter. I met the owner of Britannia and his response was, ‘Why did you have to go to a union? If you’d have called me I would have attended to what you were asking and needed.’ I told him I had been trying to contact him for three years, had written letters through a GP advisor. But despite his promises, nothing was done to resolve my problems and the bullying continued.

I was depressed and didn’t want to continue working at Topshop. I told Petros I wanted to quit and he said, ‘If you’re going to leave anyway, why don’t we take advantage of that and just say everything that you want to say?’