Why We Staged a Sit-In at UW

This post was guest authored by UW student Scott Davis. Davis is the director of Our American Generation and a lead organizer in the campaign for UW to cut its contract with Sodexo.

After 7 months of polite letter-deliveries, postponed meetings with the UW administration, and general disinterest in their message to “Kick Out Sodexo," the UW chapter of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) turned to their campus community for help.

As Director of the youth-run think tank, Our American Generation, I was approached by the UW USAS crew with a request to jump on board the Kick Out Sodexo coaltion. As a completely non-ideological group, we never endorse, but the mission to Kick Out Sodexo was clear and simple: our University’s dollars should not go to a documented human rights abuser, especially for something as simple and necessary as food service.

Cutting our contract with Sodexo forces improvements to the quality of global supply chains. It worked in the original student-led campaigns to divest from apartheid South Africa. And it was proven again in UW USAS’ campaign to improve the practicies of Russell Athletics, and to pressure Nike into paying hundred of thousands of dollars it owed to workers in promised severance pay.

So the coalition was formed, and grew to 20 student groups strong. We asked for more meetings, drafted faculty letters of support, compiled varied research about the company, held educational events, and so on. We did everything that your favorite campus advocacy group does. And the administration ignored us. We had been dodged, and as a public records request would reveal, deliberately lied to about the details of the new contract proposal. We were also commonly told that our University President was absent, off campus, or out of town, when she was indeed only feet away in her office. This is when we decided to let ourselves in.

On Wednesday May 11th, 50 students from the coalition sat-in President Phyllis Wise’s office to demand we cut our current $3.4 million contract with Sodexo International, a documented human rights abuser. These 50 students, and many more that were outside, represented the 19 different student organizations that composed the coalition.

On Thursday May 19th, 22 students from the coalition staged another sit-in, this time at the University Athletics Department. The second sit-in was accompanied by a rally of over 80 students, and resulted in more student arrests.

The UW administration chose to arrest 40 of its students before engaging in any actual conversation.

What's the Big Deal with Sodexo?

In recent years, Sodexo International has become embroiled in an international controversy for its business practices. The charges against the company are expansive, and range from racial discrimination and union busting, to poverty wage rates and price gouging. It is the world’s 22nd-largest employer, with 355,000 employees in 80 countries world-wide and 120,000 employees in North America.

In 2005, Sodexo was forced to pay $80 million to thousands of its African-American employees to settle a class action lawsuit charging the company with racial segregation and racial bias in promotions. The case was one of the largest class action racial discrimination suits in U.S. history.

Sodexo also has a record of attacking unions and worker organizing efforts in order to prevent workers from securing living wages and decent working conditions. In September 2010, Human Rights Watch, a reputable NGO, published a report citing Sodexo as one of the nine worst violators of workers’ rights to form unions and freely assemble. In HRW’s words, “despite claims of adherence to international standards on workers’ freedom of association, Sodexo has launched aggressive campaigns against some of its U.S. employees’ efforts to form unions and bargain collectively.”

Just this January, TransAfrica Forum, a prominent international human rights organization, published a report finding that Sodexo engages in rampant human rights violations worldwide. These violations include discrimination, poor safety conditions, inhibition of the right of workers to organize and extremely low wages at Sodexo workplaces in Guinea, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Morocco. The report found that Sodexo workers in these countries were receiving wages as low as 33 cents an hour, while others were subjected to mandatory pregnancy tests as a precondition for employment.

Not only does Sodexo’s pursuit of profit at any cost hurt workers, it also means a raw deal for client universities and their students. A New York State investigation confirmed that Sodexo was illegally shortchanging public institutions, resulting in Sodexo paying out a $20 million settlement. Attorney General Cuomo found that Sodexo “cut sweetheart deals with suppliers and then denied taxpayer-supported schools the benefits … in violation of the contracts, as well as state and federal laws.”

The investigation revealed that it is common practice nationally for Sodexo to seek out these supplier discounts, called “rebates,” rather than finding the best deal for its clients.  This means inflated meal plan costs for students and, when Sodexo fails to properly report and return the rebates, can mean violations of its contracts with public institutions.

How will we win?

Last week, UW students met with head honchos at Sodexo; we showed up to the meeting about 30 people strong from the coalition, and sat down with three Sodexo executives and several UW admin.

We had large displays of the major human rights allegations against Sodexo mentioned above, and a list of simple commitments that Sodexo could make that would improve their standing in the eyes of the students.

What was their response? They are launching a cool line of compostable products! While I am sure we are all happy that Sodexo is “going green," it is an appalling substitution for human rights.

We know the clock is ticking. The Request For Proposals for the new contract is released in July, when most students are on summer break. We have momentum on our side, but the window of opportunity is beginning to close. Now is the time that we must show the administration that these actions will not go unnoticed by the larger community (esp. alumni and fellow Washingtonians).

Sign our petition and tell Phyllis Wise to support the students and cut the contract with Sodexo.  You can send her an email (pres@uw.edu), call and leave a message (206-543-5010), or even drop a message on the UW Facebook page.