Apr
1
Look out, Sodexo. Students and workers are pulling back the curtain.
Two letters released today denounce Sodexo executives’ attempts to hide the truth:
- Sodexo workers in the Dominican Republic wrote to the U.S. university community, and
- USAS responded to Sodexo’s statements to universities.
Since the Sodexo Truth Tour kicked off two weeks ago, university administrators have shared the messages Sodexo executives sent in response to universities’ serious concerns over the company’s human rights violations worldwide. It didn’t take long at all for us to realize that Sodexo was trying to mislead students and administrators, rather than address serious problems. If Sodexo executives thought our universities would uncritically swallow their half-baked arguments, they’ve got another thing coming.
When Sodexo workers in the Dominican Republic found out what Sodexo was saying, they were so outraged that they immediately called a meeting of their union SitraSodexoDO to write a joint response. Then today, USAS sent a letter to Sodexo chairman and founder Pierre Bellon to comprehensively debunk all of the lies, misleading statements and baseless claims made by Sodexo executives to the university community.
The USAS letter begins:
Dear Chairman Bellon,
As students at your client universities who are deeply concerned about your company’s human rights record, we write today to urge your company to end its unproductive attempts to mislead students and university officials. While we are encouraged that more and more of our universities are evaluating whether to stop doing business with Sodexo, we are disturbed by your company’s responses to university officials. Instead of resorting to smoke and mirror tactics to hide your company’s serious human rights violations, Sodexo executives should acknowledge a systemic pattern of abuse and take immediate steps to stop it once and for all… [Read full letter.]
