PETA : Hippies :: Sodexo : Tulane

Well, I have decided, at long last, to finally add another blog post! This posting is motivated not by any competition with any other bloggers who may or may not be named Meredith Mullins, but to my allegiance to you, the loyal fan, and the hope that one day that word will be plural.

This entry is a long one but it’s important, so I hope you’ll bear with me. Getting right into things, there has been a lot of talk at my University about the recent push by Sodexo workers for unionization. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this problem, Sodexo is a large, multinational corporation that provides the food and staff at Bruff, the University cafeteria. They have lodged several complaints against their employer, from as minor as not being able to use the bathroom to refusing to rehire employees who come back from maternity leave. Mostly, though, their grievances revolve around their piss poor wages and inability to unionize.

There have been student efforts to support Bruff workers, which included boycotting food students already paid for, a petition, noisy parades through the middle of campus, and a nifty line of T-shirts.

Now, I am not here to say that Sodexo is blameless in this whole mess. They’ve had a history of employee harassment, a HMO plan that costs employees 1/4 of their salary, and few opportunities for promotion. They brought all this on themselves and I think of all the companies available to handle the cafeteria food, it was really shitty of Tulane to choose them because they were the cheap option (see also mandatory on-campus housing and meal plans). Hell, I even signed the petition to let the workers unionize. I’ve been in the service industry myself and am a supporter of worker’s rights so I was sympathetic. But now that I have done some more research on the Sodexo problem, I have decided to publicly resend my support.

First, though, I’d like to commend the Tulane student body for actually giving a shit about something. Student activism at this University is almost non-existent. I just don't support the current student movement supporting Bruff workers. I think it is activism for activism's sake and if more people knew who and what they were supporting they wouldn't sign on to it.

On the surface, it all seems very simple. The poor, hardworking Bruff employee want better wages, better health care, and respect from the fat cats who run Sodexo. And they’re right, the workers at Bruff are being exploited. Not by Sodexo though, but by the SEIU.

The SEIU is an international labor union and is currently the largest one in existence. A little about the SEIU: they are by far the most aggressive of the union groups insofar as recruiting goes. They’ve been criticized for raiding other union groups in the attempt to recruit their members by using anti-union mailings/phone calls, attack websites, smear campaigns, union-busting consultants, and desertification campaigns. Oh how the irony runs thick.

Ever since the SEIU started merging local unions into "Megalocals" they have been bleeding members who feel neglected. As a result they have gone on the offensive in recruiting new members.

The most recent target in their crosshairs has been the Sodexo workers. Sodexo is one of the few companies that has profited from the recession. Their success lies in their affordability, which they achieve by cutting costs wherever possible, especially when it comes to wages. Since the labor pool has become saturated and workers are being forced to take lower paying jobs, they are able to pay near minimum wages and pass the savings onto their customer. As a result, they have a lot of disgruntled employees who are having a hard time surviving on the low pay.

Realizing this, the SEIU came down and started preaching to the workers to unionize. They masterminded the whole "Clean Up Sodexo" campaign and started holding rallies to incite Sodexo workers to join. This has been difficult, however, since Sodexo really hasn't violated any of the terms of their employee-employer contract. The workers took the job realizing the pay was poor and since it is such a low skill job most of them are easily replaceable. Therefore, if they tried for a union and failed, those who were involved would get the axe and be replaced fairly quickly. This isn't outward intimidation by Sodexo as the SEIU claims, it's just the nature of the game.

But, if the SEIU could convince enough of the workers to unionize, the cost to replace them would be greater than the cost of giving them a raise. The workers would receive higher pay, the SEIU would receive their membership dues and influence in the labor force, and the University would foot the bill.

Whether this is a testament to the SEIU's ingenuity or the ignorance of the student population I don't know, but somehow they managed to convince the students that the Bruff workers arbitrarily decided they wanted to unionize and Sodexo was intimidating them out of it.

This is simply not true. Most of the “allegations” made by employees have been nebulous and unsubstantiated. If you look at them, they are really no different than the grievances of a McDonald’s or Pizza Hut worker, whose jobs are comparable in skill and wages without the benefit of being on a college campus with lots of energetic young students itching to get behind a cause.


Pretty soon, the students were holding rallies and parades, marching against their own (or, to be accurate, their parents,’ since they're the ones paying for the meal plan) self interests for a cause they know little about. Activism for activism's sake. I mean, it certainly is an attractive cause. It's close to home, it’s the little guy versus the corporation, and it gives you the chance to sit outside The Republic in the purple t-shirt you got at the rally, sipping a PBR and talking about how the university police stomped on your rights by not letting you into the dining hall.

But still the number of Bruff workers willing to put the issue of unionization to a vote has yet to reach the required %30. If the SEIU had the worker support it claims, it would have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a federally-supervised secret ballot election where workers could vote for the ability to unionize without fear of being fired. But the SEIU doesn’t want elections, they want members.

The whole issue, which I predict will more or less disappear from the radar by the end of the year, is very indicative of a lot of the problems Tulane student body. The wealthy kids whose biggest problem is that they have no problems want to get on board with a cause that seems pretty clear cut. And before the personal attacks begin, I'm not going to make the claim that I'm not one of them. But I do believe that when you put your name behind something you should know what you are getting behind. That is why I am writing this article.

“But Mark! These people aren’t getting the respect they deserve! Their wages are so low they can’t afford their rent or health insurance for their life or death hip replacement surgery and pain meds!”

Wow, that really sucks. If only there were some kind of federally funded healthcare system or at the very least a system that monitored employer healthcare and offered need-based assistance.

As far as the issue of respect goes, I have always gone out of my way to treat Bruff workers with respect and they have repeatedly been rude to me for no reason whatsoever. I’ve worked in the service industry making about the same amount they do and if I acted like that I would have been fired. Nobody respects you when you work in the service industry, that’s just part of the job. Is it right? No. But it certainly isn’t cause to unionize.


To the Tulane Solidarity Committee, I have this to say:
I see where you are coming from and I want you to know that I think your intentions are good, but I can think of a long list of organizations more deserving of student time and attention than the sham that is Clean Up Sodexo, such as:

-Haitian Relief Efforts

-Habitat for Humanity

-LGBT Rights

-NORML

-The abysmal quality of The New Orleans public school system

-Third World Hunger

-AIDS/HIV testing and awareness

-The Foretold Clown Apocalypse

And this is just off the top of my head.

Well, if you are reading this, odds are you either skipped a lot of paragraphs or disagree with me. To the former, shame on you. To the later, that’s alright, you can disagree with me. That doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends though. Give me a call sometime, maybe we can sit down, have a cheeseburger at Bruff, and reminisce about the pre- Akoo days when they played music with soul. Until then, stay classy