In New Orleans, Sodexo Workers Testify Before City Council About Sodexo's Illegal Practices and Failure to Help With the City's Recovery
Joined by a broad coalition of community and student supporters, Sodexo workers in New Orleans testified today before the City Council to protest the company's behavior at sites where Sodexo workers are fighting for the right to come together to raise standards in a city hungry for good jobs.
The annual earnings of a Sodexo worker in New Orleans making $8.00 an hour is $16,640
"After five years I received two raises, one for 24 cents, the other for 12 cents, and now I make $8.12 an hour which makes it hard even to pay my bills," said Anthony Thomas, a Sodexo worker at Tulane University. "Just because my coworkers and I are trying to create better jobs for everyone, Sodexo has threatened and illegally questioned my coworkers and that isn't right. I hope Sodexo plays a part in creating good jobs too."
Sodexo is one of the largest employers in the New Orleans region, and as the area leader in food service management sets employment standards for thousands of workers in the market. In New Orleans, Sodexo portrays itself as a responsible employer, pledging, for example, to help recovery efforts as the floodwaters receded in 2005. But almost five years later, workers testified today, Sodexo has failed to live up to its promises.
"Before the storm, I worked for Sodexo at the school district. In the aftermath, all Sodexo did was offer to give us a payout based on our vacation time," says Zella Dase, a food service worker at Loyola University. "I didn't have any vacation and none of my coworkers that I know did either. I can't believe that they didn't offer to help us at all."
Although workers at Sodexo's unionized generally fare better than their nonunion counterparts, some of them also earn wages low enough to qualify them for public assistance.
"I've worked for Sodexo for nearly 3 years, but I've been on food stamps for over a year now," said Zarassa Harris, a Sodexo custodian in the Recovery School District. "For lunch, my kids eat free. I think it's sad that I work for a huge, profitable food service company, yet my kids have to rely on the federal government to get lunch at school."
These sorts of low-wage jobs exacerbate the problems in a city that is in desperate need of good jobs and lasting economic development. Nearly one in four New Orleanians lives below the poverty line, almost double the poverty rate for the United States as a whole.
At today's hearing, workers released a report on Sodexo's track record in New Orleans, Hardship in the Big Easy: How Sodexo's practices leave New Orleans workers in poverty. The report reveals that Sodexo Facilities management erased overtime from weekly time reports from time clocks every Wednesday or Thursday, leaving workers a total of $22,000 out of pocket over the course of last year. Sodexo eventually had to pay back the money after workers put pressure on the company.