Can you imagine handing millions of dollars to a corporation charged with everything from racial discrimination and poverty wage rates to union busting and price gouging?
Neither can the students of the University of Washington.
That’s why they started a campaign to urge UW President Phyllis Wise to cut the university’s contract with food service provider Sodexo, an international human rights abuser. Click here to sign their petition.
The world’s 22nd largest employer, Sodexo has a record of human rights violations that has been condemned by the National Labor Relations Board and Human Rights Watch. In the last decade alone, they’ve been accused of:
•Failing to provide safety equipment required by Colombian law, such as hardhats, to workers at their Carbones de la Jagua coal mine.
•Segregating Guinean employees, including managers, from European and other non-Guinean staff during meals at an iron mine in Simandou.
•Paying U.S. workers such low wages that they qualify for federal anti-poverty programs and denying requests for overtime.
•Intimidating—and retaliating against—workers in the U.S., Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Morocco in response to attempts to unionize.
What’s more, Sodexo has a nasty habit of cheating clients. One Sodexo scheme to squeeze extra cash from New York’s public institutions resulted in a lawsuit and a $20 million settlement.
Yet President Wise isn’t budging.
Over the past seven months, UW students have led protests, delivered letters, and met with administration officials in an effort to prevent their tuition dollars from flowing into Sodexo’s deep pockets.
Rather than engaging with students, UW officials are throwing up barriers to dialogue.
In fact, UW officials chose to arrest 40 students attending sit-ins rather than talk to them.
UW students need public support to break the gridlock.
To stand with Washington students and pressure President Wise to cut UW’s contract with Sodexo, sign here:
Be a Seed for Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.