Students Call on Sodexo to Follow Suit as Aramark Agrees to Work With CIW

IMMOKALEE, Fla., April 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Responding to an escalating campaign waged by students across the country, Aramark has agreed to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to directly improve farmworker wages and working conditions in the tomato fields of Florida. The agreement comes a year into the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA)’s “Dine with Dignity” campaign, which calls on major food service providers to take responsibility for the human rights crisis and grinding poverty faced by workers in their tomato supply chains. SFA’s Dine with Dignity campaign has also helped to usher in groundbreaking agreements between the CIW and Bon Appetit Management Company and Compass Group. Sodexo now stands isolated as the only major food service provider to not yet join this rising tide of social responsibility.

“This victory is a testament to the power we have as students and young people standing together with farmworkers. The agreement comes in the wake of several successful campus campaigns resulting in Student Senate resolutions calling on Aramark to work with the CIW, including at UF. Thanks to this movement, Aramark has come to understand that the voice and participation of farmworkers themselves are necessary and central components of any real change in the agricultural industry,” said Richard Blake, Student/Farmworker Alliance member at the University of Florida.

“Now that Aramark has come around, Sodexo doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If Sodexo is to truly embrace social responsibility and guarantee to consumers that the food on our tables is not the product of human rights abuse, it must follow Aramark and several other industry leaders in working with the CIW,” said Meghan Cohorst, Student/Farmworker Alliance.

“As the daughter of a migrant farmworker and student at an Aramark-contracted campus literally down the road from Immokalee, I had no choice but to be a leader in this fight. Even on a seemingly apathetic and conservative campus, we made a difference and garnered significant support amongst the student body for this campaign. SFA has once again played a crucial role in walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the CIW to another victory,” said Angela Cisneros, Student/Farmworker Alliance member at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Meghan Cohorst, Student/Farmworker Alliance (Immokalee), 239-503-1533, meghan@sfalliance.org

Angela Cisneros, SFA (Florida Gulf Coast University), 239-200-1710

Richard Blake, SFA (University of Florida), 813-767-8512

SOURCE The Student/Farmworker Alliance