For a year, Alma Sanchez has had to work with the man she says sexually harassed her. She said she has held in anger and frustration knowing El Milagro’s owners didn’t thoroughly investigate her report.

On Thursday, surrounded by co-workers and supporters of El Milagro workers calling for the tortilleria’s owners to meet them at the table and negotiate better working conditions, Sanchez said she was there to represent all the women who work at the factory who have also been sexually harassed.

At the rally, held outside the El Milagro tortilla factory and taqueria on West 26th Street and South Albany Avenue, about 50 workers and supporters, including several local and state representatives, said the company’s unsafe and unfair working conditions have been a problem for years.

Aldermen, county commissioners and state senators and representatives offered the workers support as they continue to speak up despite fearing losing their jobs.

After walking out last week, employees received a letter attached to their paychecks saying that while employees have a right to strike, they should keep in mind that if they participate in a labor strike they could be permanently replaced.

“A strike hurts our ability to offer our product to the community we love and serve,” one of many numbered points in the letter said.

Employees speaking at the rally called the company’s response an intimidation tactic, and said though they were afraid of losing their jobs, they decided to speak up knowing they are not alone.

On Thursday, Arise Chicago, a nonprofit workers’ rights organization that helped employees organize, filed an unfair labor charge against El Milagro at the National Labor Relations Board.

Laura Garza, Arise Chicago’s worker center director, said employees came to the organization reporting low wages and having to work sometimes seven days a week.

Sanchez said she knows she might lose her job by attending the rally but that joining her co-workers in demanding changes has given her the space she needed to speak up and let out her anger.

In July, when her co-workers started talking about organizing to demand better pay and fairer working conditions, Sanchez told them she supported them, but stayed distanced from the conversation, she told the Tribune on Thursday after the rally.

While listening in to one conversation at an organizers’ meeting, another woman said the words “sexual harassment” and Sanchez said it lit a fire inside of her.

She approached Garza and asked her what happens when someone is accused of sexual harassment. She told Garza she too had experienced that and nothing happened after she reported it.

“For me it’s very difficult being near that person,” she said of the co-worker who continues to work despite her reporting him. “I’m always feeling defensive, I’m always looking over at him. I feel so much rage.”

That rage has affected her life and family at home, she said. And she felt it again this week when she saw the letter from her employer saying they have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.

“I was made to feel like a liar,” she said. “They made me feel, it’s as if they’re saying, ‘You know what? What you say, it means nothing.’”

Since she spoke up, other women have spoken up too. And she said she knows of more women who have been victims of sexual harassment but are afraid of retaliation from within the company.

Martin Salas, who has worked for El Milagro for 10 years, said he’s given many years of his life to the company and all that he and other workers want is for the owners to have a civilized conversation with them.

Salas said he approached the owner, who was at the 21st Place plant recently.

“I told him, ‘I would like to speak with you,’ to which he said, ‘If it’s about what’s going on, I don’t have time. All I can tell you is that things will change,’” Salas said. “I asked him, ‘When?’ and he told me, ‘I don’t know.’”

Salas said the owners often tell their workers they are part of their family.

“I’d rather not be part of your family, be an employee, but one who is treated with honesty and one who isn’t overworked,” he said.

State Rep. Edgar Gonzalez said he lives a block from the 26th Street El Milagro location and grew up buying El Milagro tortillas. He said he was sad and angry knowing he has given the company so much business and now knowing the conditions for the workers.

“We are here in solidarity with you all to ensure that this doesn’t continue to happen,” Gonzalez said. “And to ensure that you get, not what you want, but what you deserve.”

scasanova@chicagotribune.com