The passengers never see them coming.

They arrive before dawn and stay past midnight. With aching hands, they clean cabins, push wheelchairs, and haul bags. They walk marathon distances. They eat when they can, sleep when they are allowed, and send what is left of meager paychecks to children they have not seen in years.

They are the ground workers at San Francisco International Airport — among the lowest-paid staff at one of the busiest airports in the country, doing some of its most physically punishing labor. This summer, after years of grinding double shifts, throbbing joints, and wages that barely cover the rent, they are fighting for a raise.

Unifi and ABM did not respond to requests for comment. A San Francisco International Airport spokesperson said Monday that the airport “[does] not comment on ongoing contract negotiations,” deferring to the “employer and union.”

Five workers who agreed to speak with The Standard over the past month come from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and the Philippines. Several have been in the U.S. for fewer than three years. One has been working at SFO for 17. What they share is the exhaustion of people doing essential, invisible work in one of the most expensive regions in the country — and the conviction that something has to change.

Sonia Fernandez Trujillo came from Colombia five years ago seeking stability. She found work cleaning airplane cabins for Unifi and, with it, a shift running from 2 p.m. to past midnight, mandatory overtime she cannot refuse, and repetitive motions that leave her hands numb.

Her crew handles between 150 and 250 flights a day, with as little as two to five minutes to clean each cabin before the next departure. Meal breaks get radioed away before they begin.

“The planners say, ‘No lunch right now — there’s another flight,’” she said in Spanish through a translator. “So we eat when we have a chance.”

Workers who cannot afford cars sometimes miss the last BART train home and sleep in the airport terminal until their next shift, she said. Fernandez Trujillo drives a 2000 Toyota Corolla and pays $60 to $70 a week in gas after moving closer to the airport to cut costs; a portion of her paycheck is garnished each month for parking.

Fernandez Trujillo self-medicates with ibuprofen before shifts. She considers herself lucky compared with coworkers who have lost mobility in their hands or legs, or who have fallen on aircraft stairs.

“The manager simply says, ‘If you can’t do this job, go away,’” she said.

She has not returned to her home country since she arrived in the U.S. Her father died in Colombia while she was working in San Francisco.

Nestor Dolde wakes at 4 a.m. He is at the airport by 5:30, pushing passengers in wheelchairs. He clocks out at 2 p.m. and clocks in for his second job pushing passengers for a different contractor. He typically drives home just before midnight. He is 74 years old.

“I sacrifice myself for my family,” Dolde said, “because I love them.”

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Dolde has worked at SFO for nearly 17 years, for contractors Integrated Airline Services and ABM. He sleeps four to four and a half hours a night and sits on the union’s executive board. He can’t afford to stop.

A coworker counted 20,000 steps in a single shift. For Dolde, working a double, the daily total approaches 40,000 — well over a half marathon.

On international flights, his team of 15 to 17 shuttles scores of wheelchair passengers — one at a time, per contract — through the full gauntlet: customs, baggage claim, ground transportation. When passengers can’t walk at all, workers have to carry them off the plane, often without knowledge of the person’s medical condition or any protective equipment.

“You cannot assess what sickness they have,” Dolde said. “Sometimes you have blood stains.”

United Airlines, whose passengers many such workers serve, reported record revenue of approximately $59 billion last year, with profits estimated at more than $4 billion. The airline said (opens in new tab) last year that it planned to increase its flights out of SFO to around 300 per day, more than any other carrier in the Bay Area.

“The airlines are making money because of the passengers,” Dolde said. “But they don’t want to provide more money to the employees.”

If the new contract delivers $30 an hour, he said, he will finally be able to work just one job.

Yordanis Escalon, 37, came to the Bay Area from Venezuela and has cleaned cabins for Unifi for nearly two and a half years. His team of 11 is supposed to have an hour to clean a cabin after an international flight. That is not the reality. 

“Imagine cleaning a plane in five minutes,” he said through a translator. “It’s impossible. And you have one supervisor with their eyes on you, screaming.”

The pressure is structural, according to Stephen Boardman, communications director for SEIU United Service Workers West. Airlines impose financial penalties on contractors for delayed departures, a cost that cascades directly onto cleaning crews. Meanwhile, staffing levels that never recovered from pandemic-era layoffs leave fewer workers covering more flights.

The pressure has followed Escalon home. A doctor told him last year he was under severe stress and referred him to therapy, which he is still receiving.

“It’s like you are invisible,” he said.

Noyra Gonzalez, 32, a wheelchair attendant for ABM, found a workaround for exhaustion. While sleeping on a stranger’s couch in Belmont — more than an hour from SFO — she used her flight benefits on days off to fly to Japan or South Korea, springing for cheap rooms and meals.

“It would literally be cheaper for me to fly to Japan or Korea than to stay here with no rest,” she said.

She moved into her own place in San Bruno this month. Her rent jumped from $300 a month to $900. She still doesn’t have a refrigerator.

Since a round of layoffs cut her shift’s staff from roughly 50 to 30, her daily call volume has climbed from around 10 flights to 16 or more. Workers push passengers — and their luggage — up sloped jet bridges. They are never told in advance how heavy the next passenger will be.

“We could break our backs,” she said

Bernardo Oblones arrived from the Philippines in November 2023 with his wife and child. While he handles baggage, his wife cleans cabins at SFO part time. He handles baggage for ABM. Half their combined paychecks go to rent — $2,444 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Daly City’s Westlake neighborhood, up $144 from last year. Their child sleeps in the living room.

Oblones wears knee braces and gloves he bought himself. ABM does not provide them.

“You feel it in your body,” he said in Tagalog through an interpreter. “Your muscles ache a lot.”

If he had a magic wand, he said, he would not wish for a raise. He would wish for housing.

“I would use it to ensure that everybody had appropriate housing,” he said. “Workers should have either subsidized or free rent.”

He described himself as a simple man who goes to church, shares what he knows with newer workers, and checks in on colleagues from other shifts. He wants to be seen as more than his grievances. But he also wants the record to show what he and his coworkers carry.

“The people who work at the airport are some of the most hardworking individuals I’ve met in my life,” he said. “They sacrifice their own health to show up for their shifts. The work that we do — it’s not fair, it’s not right.”

Despite the conditions, Escalon believes things can improve. He said the path forward runs through collective action — continued contract bargaining, public pressure, and bringing more workers into union membership.

“If the group continues the process — bargaining, actions together, staying informed — things can get better,” he said.

But he wants passengers, and the general public, to reckon with what they do not see each time they settle into a freshly cleaned seat.

“These people work so hard for cleaning and to give a good flight,” he said. “The people don’t see that.”