The Hospital Employees Union has launched a world-wide appeal for help in its bargaining with French multinational Sodexho.
- Email Sodexho executive Michel Landel now (labourstart.org)
- Background on HEU’s Sodexho campaign (heu.org)
- CCPA study of working conditions in contracted-out hospital jobs (policyalternatives.ca)
HEU, CUPE’s BC Health Services Division, organized about 1,400 Sodexho workers after the provincial government paved the way for large-scale contracting out of cleaning and food services at hospitals and long-term care facilities with a law that re-wrote HEU collective agreements.
Since the BC government passed its law, HEU has organized more than 3,400 people working for private companies like Sodexho.
But there’s a long way to go. A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Study found:
- 90 per cent of Sodexho workers earn $10.15 an hour. For a worker with two children that’s $10,000 below Statistics Canada’s poverty line.
- over 40 per cent have at least one other job and most are looking for additional work
- nearly 50 per cent intend to leave their jobs within six months
- exhaustion, illness and injury was widespread – over 60 per cent fell sick or were hurt on the job, and
- with no job security and minimal sick time, more than half came to work unwell.
HEU, in cooperation with LabourStart has launched an online campaign to pressure Sodexho’s Paris-based top executive Michel Landel to give its workers a fair contract and a decent wage.
Just in case he doesn’t agree, the workers recently gave HEU a 96 per cent strike mandate.