New Reports Expose Violations of Workers’ Human Rights

Two recent reports – “A Strange Case” by Human Rights Watch and “Voices for Change” by TransAfrica Forum – examine violations of workers’ basic civil and human rights at several global branches of Sodexo, a France-based food distribution company.

The TransAfrica Forum report recounts abuses described by Sodexo workers in the United States, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guinea, and Morocco. The report states that Sodexo offers workers the lowest wages possible, and then deprives them of desperately needed income by allegedly failing to pay them for all the hours they work, denying overtime pay, and docking their pay for meals they don’t eat and breaks they don’t take. Human Rights Watch also found that Sodexo had forced its workers into “captive audience” meetings to hear anti-union lectures, and fired workers for union activity.

“The civil and human rights coalition is committed to improving working conditions for all,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is still a very long way to go, particularly when we find that government-contracted global corporations can still thwart the basic right of human dignity. Sodexo and its shareholders have a chance to make this right at their board meeting. We urge them to rise to the occasion.”