Student protests against Sodexo leads to 66 arrests
66 students from three universities in the USA have been arrested during a ‘Kick Out Sodexo’ campaign. Their mission: our university’s dollars should not go to a multinational food service provider that abuses human rights. Sodexo is also Tilburg University’s catering service provider.
The last months, local student groups around the United States started to collaborate on a nation-wide campaign to make university’s administrations aware of injustices being done to Sodexo employees. In an effort to persuade universities to cut the contract with Sodexo, students held sit-ins and rallies at universities.
“The students believe a company, like Sodexo, who blatantly violates worker rights, should not be doing business with the university”, University of Washington (UW) student Scott Davis says in a post on change.org, where he started a petition. Signers of the petition urge UW’s President Phyllis Wise to listen to students and cut their contract with Sodexo.
In recent years, Sodexo has become involved in an international controversy over its business practices. Two international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch and TransAfrica Forum, have reported that Sodexo uses intimidation tactics to discourage workers who try to form a union and it denies their workers breaks or full pay – charges the company denies.
The French catering and food services giant Sodexo is one of the world’s largest food service providers – with 355,000 employees in 80 countries world-wide. Since January 2011 it also provides the catering services for Tilburg University. In April trade unions from six countries launched a global campaign against Sodexo, demanding to respect the workers’ rights.
According to United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the national network behind the Kick Out Sodexo campaign, students on at least 30 campuses are involved in the protests. At Ohio State University 9 students have been arrested, 7 students were arrested at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and at the University of Washington in Seattle 50 students went to jail the last couple of weeks.
