After digging up even more startling revelations about the business practices of multinational private health care provider Sodexho, the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) has filed a comprehensive Freedom of Information request with the BC health authority that hired the company two weeks ago.
HEU, which has demanded that Sodexho be fired because of its links to a filthy hospital crisis in Scotland, wants to get to the bottom of the relationship between the Northern Health Authority and the French company Sodexho, which was hired to revamp delivery of health care services at dozens of health facilities.
“In a simple web search we found more disturbing news about the company,” says HEU spokesperson Chris Allnutt. “For example it was fined in the US when a Massachusetts high school student found part of a human thumb in a turkey sandwich.
“Or take for instance Sodexho’s Union Avoidance Manual,” says Allnutt, “which states that it will use every means to prevent employees from joining unions, and urges managers to identify ‘Communists or other undesirable elements which may be active in the union.’”
In the FOI filed late Wednesday, HEU is pressing the authority to turn over a wide range of records including a copy of the Sodexho contract, whether it was openly tendered, how the contract was approved, and whether any effort was made to check Sodexho’s references.
And, in the post-Enron world, Allnutt says HEU wants to know whether Sodexho is precluded from bidding at a later date on the direct provision of the same health services that it was hired to revamp.