Isabel “Segunda” Brentner fled Guatemala in 1983 and has worked for 20 years at the LAX Hilton.

For over 20 years, Isabel “Segunda” Brentner has worked at the LAX Hilton, keeping her focus on her family and her job. “My priorities [were] to help my family,” says Brentner, who, along with raising her own children, cared for both her father and grandmother when they were ill.

About two years ago, Brentner became a vocal supporter of the fight for better working conditions at the major hotels in Los Angeles’ Century Corridor. She spent Mother’s Day 2006 on the streets, protesting the suspension of 75 co-workers who have been seeking living wages and the right to organize at the hotel. Brentner and other employees have called for a boycott of the LAX Hilton to protest the hotel’s mistreatment of its workers. Since Brentner became active, she has seen her hours cut.

Brentner is no stranger to conflict. She left Guatemala in 1983, during a particularly violent period of the country’s bloody 36-year civil war. Today, she works cleaning the lobby and common area bathrooms as a lobby attendant, and makes $10.38 an hour.

The work is difficult, said Brentner, who tires from what she says is an excessive workload and wishes the hotel would give the workers better equipment to help them do their jobs. “We want to work,” says Brentner, “but we are doing the work of two or three [people] and they pay us for one.”

Brentner dreams of someday making enough money to send her two children, 11 and 16, to college. But after paying the bills, she is unable to put any money aside, even for emergencies. Although Brentner and her husband were able to buy a home in Hawthorne, she currently faces foreclosure because they cannot afford the mortgage payments.

Further adding to Brentner’s worries are her health problems. She has high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. She has pain from repetitive motion in her knees, arms and wrists, and has a lesion on her leg that she says developed as a result of the work she does in the hotel restrooms. Along with 250 other housekeepers throughout the city, Brentner has attended a training to discuss her injuries and how to advocate for greater workplace protections.

Last December, Brentner and a group of other workers fasted outside the LAX Westin for seven days to bring greater media attention to their demands for a living wage and to remember a fellow hotel worker whose sudden death shocked the community. Shortly after the fast ended, her mother passed away. But Brentner says she still feels her mother’s spirit as she and her co-workers continue their battle for justice.

“I took her to the Hilton to fight with me and she didn’t have her legs, but I am proud of her support. I have pictures of her and from heaven I think she is helping me.”