Solidarity is powerful: ILWU Local 19 President Cameron Williams with UW-USAS members. With Local 19’s solidarity, USAS was able to get the UW to cancel its contract with Sodexo for its anti-workers policies around the world
Students at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, who stood with ILWU in the fight with Rite Aid, helped food service workers in the Dominican Republic who are fighting to win union recognition from food-service giant Sodexo. ILWU Local 19 members joined the students in this fight which resulted in UW terminating its contract with Sodexo because of their anti-union practices.
In recent years, Dominican workers employed by Sodexo in the town of Pueblo Viejo have been fired for speaking out against sweatshop conditions and forming a union of 300 members, SitraSodexoDO. Sodexo operates on many college campuses in the United States, including UW.
In early 2011, UW United Students Against Sweatshops (UW-USAS) members travelled from Seattle to Pueblo Viejo to meet with the workers struggling to organize there. They later hosted fired SitraSodexoDO member Karina Mieses’s when she visited UW to speak about the company’s abusive working conditions— including wage theft, sub-poverty wages and harassment from management. Other workers fired for organizing include Maria Magdalena Ortega Jimenez, Carin Yadel Mieses, Maraquia Penalo Rodriguez and Heriberto Sosa Morillo.
United Students Against Sweatshops, the national student movement which coordinated with ILWU to carry out actions at Rite Aid stores in multiple states, has led a powerful campaign at schools across the country in support of workers struggling for justice at Sodexo all over the world. Human Rights Watch and TransAfrica Forum recently released reports spotlighting the multinational corporation’s human rights violations in the US, Dominican Republic, Morocco, and Guinea.
In Colombia, two Sodexo workers and members of the union SINALTRAINAL (which also represents Coca-Cola workers) fighting for a new union contract with Sodexo were murdered last year, while a third leader received death threats to have his tongue cut out.
Last year in Seattle, UW-USAS members launched a no-holds barred campaign to force recalcitrant university officers to throw Sodexo off campus and end its contract to provide concessions at Husky and other UW events. Students met with Sodexo workers, held rallies, did banner drops and held three occupations of UW administrative offices, leading to dozens of arrests.
On the heels of the Rite Aid victory, ILWU rose to the invitation when some of the same UW-USAS student leaders who had leafleted and picketed Seattle Rite Aid stores called for backup in broadening the struggle to move UW to end its complicity in union-busting.
In late May 2011, Local 19 President Cameron Williams and International Organizer Jon Brier joined UW-USAS leaders on campus, dropping in for a surprise appearance at the joint student/staff Trademarks Committee (overseeing garment licensing issues), on which influential members of then-UW President Wise’s administrative staff sit.
In accordance with UW-USAS’s demands, the ILWU delegation urged administration staff members to end UW’s contract with Sodexo, drop pending charges against students arrested in solidarity protests, and work with UW-USAS to ensure the school’s future use of contractors who do not violate human and labor rights.
From there, the delegation joined up with UW-USAS leaders Morgan Currier, Eunice How, Allie Padgett and others to march on UW Interim President Phyllis Wise’s office. While President Wise’s administrative staff attempted to cut short discussion and dismiss the group, ILWU delegates refused to leave before having delivered the message of solidarity with Sodexo workers and students and secured a commitment to relay it to President Wise.
Local 19 President Williams’ letter read in part:
We believe that UW students have attempted, at first through dialogue and only as a last resort through protest, to persuade the university to honor its own values and commitment to global citizenship. In doing so, they set an admirable example for the university as whole, the Seattle community, and the State of Washington. We strongly encourage the University of Washington to drop all criminal charges against members of the Kick Out Sodexo Coalition and terminate the university’s business relationship with Sodexo immediately.
After the campus actions, UW-USAS leaders thanked President Williams and committed to keeping ILWU updated on the campaign. In the following weeks, students continued to escalate pressure on the UW administration. Finally, after 14 months and 55 arrests of students demanding UW end its relationship with Sodexo, university management announced on December 14th it would terminate the school’s $3.4 million contract with the union-busting concessions company.
USAS’s victory at UW is the latest in a long string of wins where students have forced their campuses to sever contractual ties because of outrage over human and labor rights violations.
In spreading the good news, Morgan Currier from UW-USAS reminded union and community members that “the fight to stop Sodexo’s violations isn’t over… please take a moment to tell Sodexo about the UW’s decision and urge them to stop their anti-union crackdown in the Dominican Republic.”