Aug
9
Hi. We’re students who think workers deserve rights. Really radical stuff, right? If you’re a university administrator doing business with Sodexo, it’s likely you got a nasty little message about us this month. Allow us to explain.
What would you do if a bunch of college students realized your company was paying sub-poverty wages and violating workers’ rights all over the world? What if those pesky students went around ratting out your dirty little secrets to universities where you have multi-million dollar contracts? Would you be eager to listen to workers and labor advocates to address the problems? Or would you lash out, trying to attack the students’ credibility and pray that they shut up and go away?
Like anyone with the moral courage of Mr. Burns would, Sodexo executives chose option #2. On July 12, Sodexo’s PR department spit out a letter to universities, once again copied-and-pasted from its propaganda blog SodexoResponds.org. The letter makes no effort to address the specific violations in question, it merely attacks college students’ credibility because we occasionally ask for donations to put on conferences and keep the lights on, as every organization does. More importantly, check out the last two of the three citations in their letter – they are links to a completely anonymous blog written with the academic rigor of an angry pre-teen who has an irrational hatred of labor unions. A note to Sodexo executives: if we students ever turned in that kind of footnote to our universities, we’d get a big fat “F”, so you’d better watch out!
>> For more details and background on Sodexeo’s labor practices, see students’ March 31 letter to Sodexo Chairman Pierre Bellon
No more lies: Fighting Sodexo since 1999
Joking aside, let’s set the record straight: United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) is a 14-year-old, entirely student-run organization of young people who believe that all workers deserve respect, fairness, a decent wage to feed their families, and the right to organize to address injustices at work. Our widely-celebrated accomplishments regularly grace the pages of the New York Times and academic publications, as we succeed again and again in ending labor abuse tied to our universities.
As Sodexo is well aware, students’ grievances with the corporation far pre-date any current campaign by Sitrasodexo, Sinaltrainal, SEIU, AFSCME, UNITE HERE or any other union of Sodexo workers currently fighting for justice. USAS activists have fought to kick Sodexo off campuses since 1999, when scandal erupted on campuses over Sodexo profiteering from for-profit prisons. And ever since a decade ago, when USAS launched the National Campus Living Wage campaign, Sodexo has been a recurring target of efforts to end sub-poverty pay for campus workers.
But unfortunately, while Sodexo workers face violent threats for urging the company to change its labor practices, Sodexo executives preferred to spend their time insulting students and misleading university administrators.
Just like we always have, USAS activists will continue to urge every university to hold contractors to the highest ethical and moral standards. If Sodexo executives have a problem with that, and want to continue insulting college students instead of fixing labor abuse, they are welcome to do so.
