Sodexo's Track Record of Serious and Repeat OSHA Violations

Headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, Sodexo, Inc. is a leading integrated food and facilities management services company in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with $7.7 billion in annual revenue and 120,000 employees. Sodexo serves more than 10 million customers daily in corporations, health care, long term care and retirement centers, schools, college campuses, government and remote sites.

Because of the sheer size and scope of its operations, it is essential that the range of this multinational contractor's behavior be readily available to decisionmakers in our nation's schools, universities, hospitals, and military when deciding who will provide their food and cleaning services.

Sodexo tries to squeeze out every last penny of profit by cutting corners on the most basic necessities, even if it means threatening the safety and health of its employees.

Since 2000, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and various state workplace safety agencies have found 160 violations and levied penalties of more than $200,000 against Sodexo for problems at its various worksites across the country.

Cases of Alleged Unsafe and Potentially Fatal Working Conditions

Sodexo has shown a pattern of neglecting serious hazards, and exposing its employees to violations of federal and state job safety laws:

• In September 2001, a Sodexo laundry worker at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami was killed after he fell to his death in an elevator shaft while operating a "tow motor". OSHA later cited Sodexo for serious violation of the OSHA standard on training for handling heavy power equipment.
• In May 2005, 45-year old Derrike A. Carter, a Sodexo employee working at Tuskegee University (Alabama) died following electrocution at the main power plant of the campus. Sodexo was later cited by OSHA for three electrical safety violations.
• In 2005 and 2006, the OSHA issued citations concerning serious health and safety violations for Sodexo laundry facilities in Cleveland, OH, and Pittsburgh, PA, including failure to train workers about deadly infectious disease hazards, toxic chemical hazards or procedures to prevent amputations and other severe injuries from heavy equipment.
• In May 2008, OSHA cited Sodexo's Buffalo NY laundry for multiple "repeat violations," for some of the same hazards cited years earlier in Sodexo's Cleveland and Pittsburgh laundries, including exposure to severe, life-threatening hazards like electrocution, infectious diseases, and being caught in unguarded or unexpectedly energized driers and other machinery. The total penalties were $102,000 (later reduced to $32,000).
• In December 2009, OSHA's inspector returned to the Pittsburgh plant after a worker filed a complaint, and again found violations of OSHA's standards to protect workers from infectious diseases - a critical issue in factory-sized laundries handling thousands of pounds of contaminated, soiled linen from hospitals. Once again, as in Pittsburgh in 2006 and in Buffalo in 2008, OSHA cited Sodexo for violations such as failing to properly provide exposed workers with the required opportunity to receive essential vaccinations against bloodborne disease. The penalties again involved thousands of dollars.
• From October 2006 to January 2010, California's state OSHA program cited Sodexo food service management for violating California's basic standard on "injury and illness prevention programs" - identifying the same or related violations at four locations -- after OSHA inspectors investigated severe worker injuries, including in some cases severe burns from uncovered hot cooking oil and hot water, severe fractures from equipment failures, and exposure to toxic chemicals that can cause asthma attacks.6 In some cases, OSHA also cited Sodexo for failing to provide service workers with even the basic protection like an eyewash station near to sites where workers must handle industrial-strength acids that could cause blindness if splashed into their eyes. Despite the serious hazards linked to these chemicals, Sodexo continues to force its employees to use these chemicals today.

Sodexo's failure to properly supervise its many facilities and managers regarding basic health and safety protections was aptly described by the OSHA inspector who cited Sodexo for violating the standard on hazardous equipment maintenance practices ("lockout program") in Cleveland in April 2005 (for which it was again cited in Buffalo three years later):

The Company does not have a written lockout program with specific lockout procedures for its laundry equipment. Granted, the company as of 10-26-04 was just getting started at this facility, but it is a nationwide company with many sites and some 300,000 employees! This should have been established by simply borrowing the information from the company's other operations which are similar in nature to this site in that they are all laundries!

The company also hadn't had a [chemical hazard training] program developed specifically for this site nor did it import a program from one of its other facilities.

As these examples show, time and again Sodexo managers have demonstrated a willingness to operate in violation of clear OSHA safety and health rules - even when compliance would be easy and cheap.

Thousands of Sodexo workers around the country are currently organizing to form a union so that they can have a contract that guarantees safer conditions, better wages, and affordable healthcare coverage. A union contract also would establish a joint safety program between the workers and their supervisors, and give these workers added protection to speak up for safer conditions and not be fearful of company retaliation in response.