Letter to President Angel 10/13/2010

President Angel,

As you may or may not be aware, Sodexo employees on Clark’s campus announced this morning that they will be striking in the near future and demanding Sodexo’s recognition of a card-check election process, better wages and benefits, and more respect from management, among other things. This event represents a steady progression of unresolved and largely unaddressed issues faced by workers on campus that became public last winter but began long before.

Workers’ problems relating to wages (eg. making less than $10 after more than ten years at Clark even when new hires make $12), benefits (eg. one third of a paycheck going to employer-provided health-care),scheduling (eg. cashiers’ hours being cut while new hires arrive), respect from management (eg. being loudly scolded in front of students and co-workers for a minor error), and favoritism (eg. wage discrepancies for people doing the same job and an all-white management team) have been further compounded by Sodexo’s intimidation and manipulation of workers, particularly pro-union ones (eg. interrupting union meetings, telling workers voting for a union is “signing yourself away” and that they will have to pay for their shoes after getting a union contract). Furthermore, Sodexo has a well-documented history of anti-union policies and tactics (see article: “A Strange Case”, published by Human Rights Watch), as well as an easily observable practice of offering the cheapest contracts due to lower wages and benefits. These problems are ongoing, real, and serious on campus, and so far, save for a guarantee of fall rehire and a letter not even originally intended for any Sodexo employees, nothing public and concrete has been done by Clark to address them.

It has been nearly eight months since these issues were drawn to your attention and a clear set of requests were first brought to you by the Clark Community (refer to Clark UNITE!’s letter of 2/22/10, corresponding student and faculty petitions, and a Labor Code of Conduct). As members of this community, with many of us financing Sodexo’s operations on campus, we are firmly requesting that you immediately take the following steps towards resolutely supporting and ensuring labor rights and dignity for all campus workers, outsourced or not.

1.) Publicly demand that Sodexo, as your subcontractor, accept whatever method of unionization its employees democratically choose, as stipulated in the Labor Code of Conduct.

2.) Organize a meeting between non-management employees working on Clark’s campus, students, faculty and the Clark Administration and Clark’s legal adviser or lawyer to finalize and implement a Labor Code of Conduct within 2 weeks. The meeting should be open to the rest of the Clark Community (see attached contract language regarding labor standards as a supplement to the Labor Code of Conduct topics).

3.) Involve the Clark students and faculty in discussions pertaining to contracts with private firms. Ensure the transparency and accountability of Clark University’s contracts with private firms (including financial information) by making contract-related information open to the public. No serious discussions about where our money is going or how to regulate outsourced operations can take place without knowledge of contract terms and language. In addition, Clark should follow the method of social auditing as used by socially responsible enterprises around the world and audit Sodexo.

4.) The position of a Campus Ombudsman or an equivalent third party committee must be created and institutionalized through policy in order to ensure that issues between employees and their bosses, be they Clark, Sodexo, or employees of another organization, are addressed through an avenue and process run by a third party professional yet empowered by the Clark Administration (see the letter Requesting the Appointment of an Ombudsman). Contracts should be evaluated by the Ombudsman.

5.) Halt any process of creating a policy limiting protesting and free speech on campus. If threatened with sanctions for demonstrating peacefully, we will immediately contact both the media and American Civil Liberties Union.

We expect that your actions will reflect the urgency felt by those workers who have made the serious choice to strike, as well as the urgency of any other situation dealing with human rights violations. Workers now feel that their best path involves putting their livelihoods on the line, and it is our clear duty, as members of the community, to respect their legitimate grievances and push all the more firmly for a real, equitable solution.

We hope to hear a response from you or a representative by the end of Monday the 18th of October, 2010.

Thank you for your time,

Clark Unite!

Clark Workers Speak Out

Pablo Rivera: Utilities

“I have been working for Sodexo six days a week since January 23, 2010. This semester I was forced to quit because I started as a student at Clark’s COPACE program. I told my boss last year that I was going to start taking classes this fall and that my classes might interfere with my work schedule. Even though I told my boss ahead of time I was not given the chance to work around my hours for the two days I have classes. Instead I was forced to choose between getting an education or continuing working the same schedule. As a member of the Clark community I support the union because it gives workers who are having issues and problems in their jobs a chance to talk about it and take action all together. It is more successful when all of us come together instead of fighting individually.”

Trevor Delaparra: Cook

“I am in support for a union because I want for all of us to have access to affordable healthcare and better wages.”

William McNamara: Dishwasher

“I have worked at Clark for 14 years, but last spring I was laid off for the entire semester. Sodexo said that they had to lay me off because there was a lack of work, even though I came to know they hired new workers. I was hired back this year for only two days a week. I currently make only $10 an hour after having work here for more than 14 years. I support the union because I want the workers to have a voice in the workplace. I also think it would help the students and the workers to unite.”

A Global Campaign

Sodexo Workers across United States and around the world are facing the same issues and even more severe right violations and lower working standards by working for this company. SEIU has fostered a national campaign in order to sign a global agreement with Sodexo, in which sodexo workers are able to unionize through the recognition of card check, negotiate strong regional contracts, and improve the working standards of the multi-service industry.

From cafeterias in U.S. universities to remote coal mines in Colombia—in country after country—Sodexo pays wages that are too low to support families – a mere $230 a month in the Dominican Republic and Colombia.

“I was dragged inside of the machine, my smock choking me around the neck. One more minute and I would have been dead. When my co-workers were finally able to pull me out of the vat, I was no longer breathing.” Blanca Bustos, Sodexo worker at the National Chocolate Co., Bogota

When Blanca tried to improve her working conditions by joining a union, Sodexo cancelled her contract.

“I told management that the main reason for our strike was wages, and I was told that for me at least—for me in particular— I was not getting a raise. I was called to the office, and they fired me. They are the ones who are committing injustice. They know the laws of this country, and they don’t respect them.” Carin Mieses, Sodexo Worker, Dominican Republic.

Who is Sodexo?: A Company Profile

Sodexo is a multi-service company that subcontracts work in food service, laundry service, security, and janitors in schools and corporate buildings. They've even dipped their fingers in the prison industrial complex, meaning that they operate private for-profit prisons contracted out with local governments, in Chile, Australia, the UK, and several other EU member nations. Sodexo is huge; they're the 22nd largest employer in the world with over 380,000 employees. As of 2009 Sodexo had a revenue of 20 billion, making them number 437 of the Fortune 500. Because of their size, and the nature of the industries they work in, Sodexo made a billion dollars in profit in 2008, despite the global recession.

In France, Sodexo is the 2nd largest employer after the French government. Sodexo workers in France are all unionized, get 1 month of vacation, and paid sick days. That's a stark difference compared to Sodexo workers in America. For Sodexo workers in Massachusetts, the average wage is $10.16/hr. Because of this, nine out of ten Sodexo workers in Massachusetts qualify for public assistance such as food stamps, WIC, and/or fuel assistance. Furthermore, since US labor law is very weak, Sodexo's workers' right to organize is not respected despite Sodexo's official lip service.

Sodexo has a record of union-busting. In 1998 a manual was leaked ot the International Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) titled, "Progressive approach to Labor: Union Avoidance," which prescribed threatening employees considering strike that they would be fired for doing so. More recently Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report which documented widespread anti-union captive audience meetings in the USA. In one case in a laundry facility in Phoenix Arizona, after a majority of workers petitioned the NLRB for a union election, Sodexo held many captive audience meetings filled with threats. When several workers from the same shop held a demonstration in favor of unionization, four of them were fired. The report documents managers using the threat of termination of employment if workers cannot, "work as a team." Finally among other abuse, the report documents how during a training management was advised to tell workers:

• The union is allowed to make promises because it doesn't pay your wages. The union's promises are meaningless.
• There are some people who, for their own selfish reasons, have been putting a lot of pressure on many of you…. [T]hese people would manipulate things for their own ends.
• A union is not concerned about job security. It cares only about its security, which means your dues in the union's pocket.
• If you read the newspapers and watch the news, you know how many represented companies have closed their doors in this state and all over the country…. Nearly every labor union contract contains language that provides for the potential of layoffs.
• The company has the legal right to conduct its business and hire permanent economic replacements for every striker…. the company would do what it had to do to ensure business continuity in the event of a strike.
• You may want to ask yourself why some people have been promoting a strike when they know that employees risk being permanently replaced. Ask yourself what they have to gain.

Sodexo has furthermore told management:

• Tell employees that union representatives are manipulators who make meaningless promises and care only about collecting dues. This implicitly brands workers who support the union as dupes or collaborators.
• tell employees "you know how many represented companies have closed their doors in this state and all over the country." This implicitly warns workers that their jobs are at risk if they form a union.
• Sodexo advised managers to tell employees that the company can hire permanent replacements and "would do what it had to do" in the event of a strike, a statement permitted under US labor law, but fraught with menace and contrary to international standards.

As Sodexo workers across the U.S. continue their efforts to form a union in order to win fair and safe working conditions, respect and dignity on the job, and a voice with their employer to create stable, good jobs, HRW's report asserts that Sodexo has threatened, interrogated and fired workers who tried to form a union.

The official stance of the company is that "Sodexo recognizes and respects the rights of our employees to unionize, or not to unionize, as they choose." But as this evidence shows, the anti-union campaign that has been going on at Clark is part of a company wide violation of labor rights. This past spring of 2010, after the SEIU started organizing Clark workers Sodexo had two higher ups from corporate come in and lead a anti-union meeting that workers were told was a mandatory training. During this meeting workers were told that if they signed anything for the union they would be "signing themselves away" and also that workers would be "earning less under a union contract." Both of these lies are protected against under labor law. Clark allowed Sodexo to use Clark premises and even our Media Services to conduct that meeting.