Apr
13
USAS | United Students Against Sweatshops 1150 17th Street NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036 – email hidden; JavaScript is required – www.usas.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April 13, 2011
Contact: Claire Lewis, Northeastern University sophomore, 201-888-1999
Vicko Alvarez, USAS Domestic Campaigns Coordinator, 202-549-5649
Northeastern U. Rejects Food Service Giant Amidst Student Outcry Over Human Rights
Sodexo Bid Fails As Dozens of Colleges React To Human Rights Exposés, Illegal Overcharging, Health Inspection Failures
BOSTON, MA–Northeastern University has rejected a bid by the French outsourcing giant Sodexo to take over the school’s multi-million dollar dining services contract, announced Student Government Association President Ryan Fox during a public meeting late Monday. The decision comes after escalating campus protests, culminating Monday morning when over 500 students called or e-mailed NEU President Joseph Aoun’s office in an eleventh hour show of opposition to Sodexo’s attempts to win the contract.
Nation-wide student outcry against Sodexo, the 21st largest employer in the world which feeds more college students than any other company, has swelled dramatically this month in response to recent exposés by Human Rights Watch and the TransAfrica Forum of egregious and persistent human rights violations by Sodexo against its workers in the U.S. and overseas. Last week alone, Sodexo made headlines not only over student protests of its human rights violations, but also over two high-profile health inspection failures at Georgia Tech and at Fordham University, where inspectors found roaches and mice in Sodexo’s kitchen.
Since 2009, students activists concerned with worker rights on over thirty campuses have campaigned to end their universities’ contracts with Sodexo, to pressure the company to end a series of documented human rights violations against its workers both overseas and in the U.S., including the firing and intimidation of workers who speak up about sweatshop conditions and sub-poverty wages. The decision at Northeastern is the most significant victory in the student campaign since November, when Pomona College in California announced it would terminate its contract with Sodexo, a decision that Sodexo has since acknowledged was driven by concerns over labor practices.
“We applaud Northeastern for refusing to contract with a world-renowned violator of workers’ rights,” said Claire Lewis on behalf of Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), the USAS affiliate at NEU. “But to truly be a leader in promoting social justice, Northeastern must include labor standards in its next food service contract, to ensure basic worker rights are protected on our campus.” Last fall, PSA proposed comprehensive labor standards to be included in contracts with all future food service providers. For PSA, this is the newest chapter in a long-standing struggle to support campus workers, including the janitors’ campaign for living wages that flared in the spring of 2008 with week-long protests at the university president’s Beacon Hill mansion.
Two weeks before the decision, on March 28, Northeastern hosted a packed-room event featuring Carina Mieses, a former Sodexo worker in the Dominican Republic who’s case was highlighted in TransAfrica Forum’s report on Sodexo human rights violations. Ms. Mieses has traveled coast-to-coast as part of students’ “Sodexo Truth Tour,” launched in response to dishonest and misleading statements by Sodexo executives to university officials.
“Northeastern is only the first of many schools this spring that will refuse to do business with Sodexo,” said Vicko Alvarez, recent Unviersity of Chicago alum and Domestic Campaigns Coordinator for United Students Against Sweatshops. “Students across the country will make sure their universities follow in Northeastern’s foot steps and say no to Sodexo’s human rights violations.”
The students are fresh from a major victory last year, when they forced sportswear giant Nike to take unprecedented steps to repay and guarantee rights of garment workers at its supplier factories in Honduras, after three universities decided to cut ties with Nike. Sodexo is no stranger to such campaigns, as it caved in to student pressure in 2001 when it ended investment in U.S. for-profit prisons after six universities cut ties with the company.
United Students Against Sweatshops, formed by college students in 1997, is the independent, entirely student-run national organization with affiliates at over 200 universities and colleges, where students campaign with on-campus workers and college garment workers to end sweatshop conditions, win economic justice and hold corporations accountable.
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