Emory Admin Address Treatment of Campus Food Service Workers

A meeting at on Tuesday gave school administration and other representives the opportunity to discuss the arrest of seven student protesters last spring.

The special meeting held by the Emory University Senate aimed to address the ongoing conflict between Sodexo, a food management company, Students and Workers in Solidarity, a student group, and the university which resulted in the arrest of seven Emory students last April.

Sodexo, an international provider of food and facilities management services, has come under fire from human rights groups in recent years for allegedly paying employees below a living wage and using anti-union tactics.

These are a few of the same allegations made by the Emory students of Students and Workers in Solidarity, a student group that cited personal testimony from Sodexo workers on Emory’s campus as well as the inequalities between Sodexo workers and Emory employees.

Last April, members of the student group camped on Emory’s quad in peaceful protest of the treatment of the Sodexo food service workers who are considered contract workers and not employees of Emory.

They demanded a public forum with Emory President James W. Wagner to speak about what they perceived to be serious inequities in the treatment of the workers.

After five days of this protest, the campus administrators demanded the students leave and soon after began forcibly removing their belongings.  

The seven students who remained on the quad were arrested and spent the night in Dekalb County Jail.  

The students have been charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail.

Tuesday’s meeting was an opportunity for Sodexo, the student group and Emory admininstration to respond to the allegations made and actions taken last spring in front of the University Senate, a group made up of faculty, staff, and students who makes recommendations as to the policy of and issues related to the University.

President Wagner said the charges against the students arrested were brought by Dekalb County — not Emory — and that Emory is pursuing a resolution that involves working with the students.  

"We do not feel the arrests were improper or wrongful,” Wagner said in response to the faculty outcry after the arrests last year.

Joe Diaz, a graduate student at Emory and one of the students arrested in April, said Tuesday the dismissal of charges Wagner referred to was on condition that the arrested students sign a letter that included admitting they were in the wrong and giving up their right to legal regress. 

Diaz called upon the Senate to not be distracted from SWS’s main goals.

“Let us be clear the issue of the arrest was never our focus… it is more of a question of the state of the University, Diaz said. “On paper Emory is a model of ethical practices… (but) the two-tier labor system must be done away with.  Separate is not equal.”

Representatives of Sodexo pointed out on Tuesday that their compliance with the UN Global Compact and other human rights groups. They also described the examples brought against the company as “isolated examples… improperly inflated.”

Eric Bymaster, Emory’s Assistant Vice President of Finance and Operations, addressed some of the allegations and demands made by the student group relating to the University’s relation to Sodexo.

Bymaster denied that there were “systematic” human rights violations. He admitted that while different employees provided by different employers at Emory receive different salaries and benefits, the situation could be likened to those between faculty and staff and tenured and non-tenured faculty at Emory.

The representatives of Students and Workers in Solidarity urged the community to “look beyond the data provided by Sodexo to the stories of the individuals behind that data” because “when you put a name and face to that data, what the numbers show is that they’re barely getting by.”

They cited their commitment to employment justice, and decried Emory’s acceptance of Sodexo’s statements and statistics rather than engaging in an ethical investigation.  

The student group also denounced Emory’s two-tiered labor system separating the contracted and the hired and quoted personal testimony from Sodexo employees at Emory whose stories reflected difficult situations, involving poverty stricken homes, lack of upward mobility at Sodexo, and a system of part-time labor that forced these employees to work second and third jobs.

In a continuation of proceedings, the University Senate will form two committees — one on class and labor and another on student protest and community — to thoroughly research the issues and the claims made by both the students and Sodexo.  

The University Senate plans to bring a recommendation to President Wagner in October as to whether Emory will continue their contract with Sodexo.

The Emory students arrested last spring are due back in court Oct. 6 in Decatur.