Aug
27
In terrific news from Indiana, Purdue University found that outsourcing around 700 janitorial jobs to Sodexo would be less efficient than keeping those jobs in-house (see the report). The decision flies in the face of Republic Governor Mitch Daniels, who is pushing public schools to outsource operations to private companies to cut costs, whose own efforts to privatize state welfare services were struck down by the courts.
Gautam Kumaraswamy, an organizer with the USAS affiliate Purdue Organization for Labor Equality, wrote a column for the Journal & Courier detailing the situation:
A recent Purdue University report showed that in-house custodial employees performed their services more efficiently than a private contractor and identified a number of intangible benefits that enable student and research success. … Purdue’s review and assessment of custodial services found that higher wages and benefits “is more than offset by the productivity level of the custodial staff.”
Gautam points out another local example where schools contracted with Sodexo in hopes of cutting costs, but got just the opposite:
The company currently provides food service and facilities management at Clarian Arnett Hospital and provided food services for West Lafayette Community School Corp. … Superintendent Rocky Killion wrote that although Sodexo was brought in to reduce food service cost, the costs were steadily rising and that bringing operations in-house had started to yield positive results.
The column goes on to point out another hidden cost of doing business with Sodexo: their workers are forced to enroll in taxpayer-funded healthcare services because of the low pay and lack of health insurance. Gautam explains,
Sodexo has based its business model on cutting corners and an antiworker record. Workers in schools and universities only work about 38 weeks per year at wages just above the federal minimum wage, making it next to impossible to buy the company’s onerous health insurance option.
As students at universities all across the country, we congratulate the Purdue community for rejecting Sodexo’s attempt to the privatize janitorial jobs, and we call on universities to stop doing business with this irresponsible company.
[...] In Indiana, USAS members at Purdue University mobilized their community to successfully stop the attempt to privatize 700 janitorial jobs to multinational giant Sodexo, defying Republican Gov. Daniels’ urging for all public in situations to privatize! http://kickoutsodexo.usas.org/2010/08/27/purdue-rejects-sodexo/ [...]