Rise up!

Gabriela Rodriguez was fired from her job as a cleaner for eating a tuna sandwich. Now she and others like her are fighting back

- Jack Shenker

REMOVING RUBBISH BAGS FROM THE office in Finsbury Circus - a towering ring of neoclassical buildings that sits at the heart of London's financial district-formed a key part of Gabriela Rodriguez's daily duties. So did wiping surfaces, scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, restocking basic supplies and all the other quietly essential activities that enable a busy workplace to function. "I'm proud of my job... and I take it very seriously," she says. Which is why, when the call from. her manager flashed up unexpectedly on her mobile last November, nothing about it seemed to make any sense.

"He ordered me to come back inside and hand over my security pass immediately," she says. Rodriguez was at a loss, until the words "theft of property" were mentioned - an act of gross misconduct, and a criminal offence under English law. "That's when it began to dawn on me," she says, shaking her head. "This was about a leftover piece of bread. And I was going to be dismissed for it."

The call was the beginning of a journey that would rearrange her life completely: plunging her family into financial uncertainty, but also casting her as a hero for lowpaid workers across the country who are being forced out of their jobs for the tiniest, most trivial of misdemeanours.

"There are so many stories like mine that most people never get to hear," Rodriguez says. "And in most cases, the people involved are staying silent because of their vulnerability, and their fear." That omertà, however, could finally be about to break. Because Rodriguez - who earlier this year led a protest rally at Finsbury Circus that involved the tongue-in-cheek delivery of 100 cans of tuna and 300 sandwiches to the foyer of the prestigious law firm from which she'd been barred - has decided not to remain silent. Alongside a small army of cleaners, caterers, security guards and other outsourced workers toiling in the underbelly of Britain, this 39-year-old single mother is fighting back.