"We’re trying to form a union, but Sodexo forced us into mandatory anti-union meetings, showed us anti-union videos, and brought individual workers in for one-on-one meetings with supervisors," said Brenda Espinoza, a food service worker at Doctors Hospital in Manteca, California. "People are scared because the bosses have never come at us like this before."
Unions representing Sodexo workers in France, the UK and North America issued a joint statement calling on the company to guarantee decent salaries and working conditions and ensure unimpeded access to their right to join trade unions.
"As a signatory to the UN Global Compact Sodexo often states that its employees are amongst its most important assets. In practice the reality for Sodexo workers in an economic sector where workers are too often insecure and woefully remunerated can fall short of both Sodexo's own stated standards and the standards we would expect from a global company. To allow Sodexo workers the opportunity to advance their working and living standards the IUF calls on Sodexo to guarantee their employees access to the fundamental rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining and to do so across the entire company operation worldwide through engagement with workers and representative unions at national and international levels." said Ron Oswald, IUF General Secretary in a press statement released by the unions taking part in the event.
The delegation also communicated with shareholders inside and outside of the company’s annual shareholders meeting in U.S. Sodexo workers delivered petition signatures from thousands of Sodexo employees across 10 American States telling Sodexo management "that it’s time to raise standards for all Sodexo workers and we want the freedom to form a union."
]]>Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, said:
"I am proud of our members for making a stand. It is never easy going on strike, particularly if you are low paid. But this action has shown what can be achieved when members stay solid and determined. These were low paid cooks, cleaners and porters, who have been waiting for three years to get the pay and terms they are entitled to under a national agreement. Their success is the first major example of UNISON's Three Companies Project, which targets the multi-national private companies Compass, Aramark and Sodexo that are now winning the majority of public sector contracts in the NHS and schools. The key to the project is to organise not just in one company, but in all the companies across the industry, so that one can't undercut the other with different conditions of service. Mr Prentis vowed that "we will go into these multinational companies and we will recruit, we will organise, we will unionise and we will get the rate for the job."
]]>Instead the Trust has used the funding to help reduce its £8 million deficit. The Trust now has no deficit but the workers have been told there is no money left for their 3 year back pay or for the payment of the improvements in wages and terms.
The workforce has organised itself in the last few months in order to campaign for their entitlements. Membership has rise from 45 to 213 since June this year and they now have an organising committee of 5 stewards. Members are still only receiving £6.77 an hour plus an attendance allowance of 22p an hour. Most get no enhanced pay for overtime, weekend working, evening or overnight work. Few are in a pension scheme.
In an effort to avert the strike the Trust and Sodexo have announced that they will now pay sick pay arrangements for all from the 1st January and will honour the holiday entitlements of Agenda for Change from the same date. But this will take no account for the 3 years unpaid rates and will still be paid on the wrong rates.
UNISON, which is likely to become an IUF member in 2010, is a major British public sector union with more than 1.3 million members working in the public services, for private contractors providing public services and in the essential utilities. They include frontline staff and managers working full or part time in local authorities, the NHS, the police service, colleges and schools, the electricity, gas and water industries, transport and the voluntary sector.
New York, NY – Alliance for Quality Services has launched a new website, Eye On Aramark Prison Contracts, which monitors Aramark’s performance in correctional facilities. The site provides independent information about Aramark’s record in prison food service to jail administrators, state and county officials and other correctional professionals.
Drawing on documentary research, Eye on Aramark Prison Contracts provides reports about events leading to Aramark’s resignation in Tarrant County, Texas, including food shortages and near riots over food service; an expose into Aramark’s tenure in Florida state prisons; a report on the ongoing grand jury investigation into Aramark’s operations at a Pennsylvania prison; an Ohio State Auditor’s investigation into Aramark’s operation at a state correctional facility; and numerous other reports of unsanitary conditions and security breaches in state and county prisons throughout the country.
These reports raise a fundamental question: are Aramark’s low-cost bids truly saving money for state and prison officials or do they carry hidden costs?
To read more about these reports, go to www.EyeOnAramarkPrisonContracts.info
The Alliance for Quality Services, a project of UNITE HERE and SEIU, is a coalition of community members – consumers, clients, investors and workers – committed to maintaining and improving the quality of services, jobs and life in communities and neighborhoods across the country and around the world.
]]>UNITE HERE, which represents over 50,000 members in Canada, including hospitality industry employees, has been helping Sodexho workers unionize over the past two months.
See the full story here
]]>NGG
Klaus Schroeter
Hacbachstrasse 76
Postfach 501180
DE-22711 Hamburg
Germany
Tel.:+49 4038 0130
Fax.:49 40389 2637
SIPTU
Noel Dowling
Liberty Hall
Dublin 1
Ireland
Tel.:+353 1 874 9731
Fax.:+353 1 874 8642
TGWU
Kevin Pass
transport House
128 Theobald's Road
Holborn
London
WC1X 8TN
UK
+44 20 7611 2500
Fax.:+44 20 7611 2555
SEIU
Tom Woodruff
1313 L Street N.W:
Washington
D.C.20005
USA
Tel.:+1 202 898 3498
Fax.:+1 202 898 3403
UNITE HERE
Ginny Coughlin
275 7th Avenue
New York
N.Y. 10001-6708
USA
Tel.: +1 212 265 7000
Fax.:+1 212 265 3415
LHMU
Louise Tarrant
Locked Bag 9
Haymarket
NSW 1240
Australia
Tel.:+61 2 8204 7200
fax.:+61 2 9281 4480
Full time positions have been eased out by filling openings with part timers, student help, or just not filling them at all. Many workers are filling two or more positions.
In the spring of 2003 we started calling for a union. Sodexho has consistently refused to give us card check which they had already done in numerous accounts across New York.
We have marched, held rallies and forums, petitioned and met with local and state government officials. All of whom have thrown their support behind us. The entire campus from faculty and staff to the students have passed resolutions also supporting us. This has gone on for a year and a half now.
Sodexho has not only refused us, but is waging an anti-union campaign and openly harrassing pro-union workers. We filed unfair labor practice charges in the spring of last year. Sodexho settled without admitting guilt. Several months later the NLRB ruled that Sodexho had to post signs promising to cease and desist all anti-union activity. Well, Sodexho didn't miss a beat. They went right on harassing pro-union workers. They even went as far as placing me under house arrest for handing out stickers to my co-workers on my break calling for card check now.
We filed more charges and because they were committed while Sodexho was still on their posting period all charges were combined and we went to court in May of this year. It'll be several months before we get a ruling from the NLRB on that.
This may be in a timely fashion for the NLRB but for the working poor who are still eligible for food stamps and medicaid or who can't afford the insurance it seems like a lifetime.
To my fellow workers and I, any move on behalf of Sodexho or our government officials to stop or delay the card check process is unconscionable.
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