Now that the Clean Up Sodexo workers are arriving home from their trip in Paris, they're taking back with them a very important and powerful notion: they're not alone in this fight.

Workers from around the world are facing the very same issues with Sodexo, and nothing brought that more to light than a very emotional exchange between Sodexo workers from around the world.

In a post published on their own blog yesterday, global union federation, the IUF, highlighted that exchange:

"As Sodexo shareholders gathered for their annual meeting this week in Paris, a delegation of the company's employees and their unions from France, the US, and the UK called for a global guarantee from Sodexo to improve pay and working conditions and guarantee the fundamental rights of Sodexo workers."

"In an emotional exchange, workers from all three countries shared their experiences of working at Sodexo and spoke out about a wide array of abuses by the company, including refusing to allow workers to form a union without company opposition, discriminating against minority workers, failing to pay people for all the hours they worked, and failing to pay nationally agreed-upon wage rates."

The UK's public service union, Unison, whose own Sodexo hospital workers recently went on strike, also covered the events:

"Turning out in solidarity with the US workers, French and British workers expressed fears that this was the future for people who work for Sodexo in Europe. Already workers on contracts in these countries have to fight for rights at work including paid sick leave and pensions. In the UK, Sodexo workers at North Devon Health Trust in UNISON recently took strike action over these issues."

At the heart of all of this is the notion that Sodexo's troubles are widespread and global. While Sodexo recently tried to "set the record straight" with a blog post of their own, stating that Sodexo's "wage levels are competitive within the industry," and that the company "unequivocally respects the rights of our employees to unionize," the experience of the workers we've spoken with tells a dramatically different story.

Ron Oswald, the IUF's General Secretary, couldn't have said it better when he said the following:

"In practice, the reality for Sodexo workers [is that Sodexo] can fall short of both Sodexo's own stated standards and the standards we would expect from a global company...The IUF calls on Sodexo to guarantee their employees access to the fundamental rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining and to do so across the entire company operation worldwide."