Over the course of the past half-year, EMU has transitioned from using an internal facilities department to contracting the company, Aramark. The details pertaining to what we know of this transition are held in the contents of the News and Feature article on page two.
When Weather Vane co-editors met recently with President Susan Schultz Huxman they asked about the transition. Post-interview, Huxman’s response to the co-editors’ questions were shared with the team working on the News & Feature article.
One of these questions within the interview was them asking Huxman if she was aware of the controversies Aramark. In response to this question, Huxman remarked, “Aramark is a big company, and there are different divisions within Aramark, so we’re not contracting with Aramark the food service. It’s a very different organization, even though it’s confusing because they share the name we are contracting with Aramark the facilities, it’s a very different organization because we did look at that because some of the history there is sobering.”
On a violation tracker website, ‘Good Jobs First’, one can find the amount of offenses Aramark’s food service has committed since 2000. In terms of employee-related offenses, there are 61 total offenses, totaling $10,826,816 in penalties. In terms of safety-related offenses, there are 38 offenses, totaling $379,352. Their top five offense types are, according to the website are: “wage and hour violations (28-$9,793,914), False Claims Act and related (1-$7,857,000), labor relations violation (30-$733,402), workplace safety or health violation (38-$379,352), and employment discrimination (3- $299,500)
Some of the documented controversies that Aramark has faced are: the organization has allegedly long benefited from prison labor. According to a ‘The Public Interest’ article written in 2016, a $145 million three-year contract was signed in December 2013 between Aramark and the Michigan Department of Corrections to provide the correctional facility’s 43,000 prisoners meal services. According to their reports, however, “[Aramark] cut the pay of kitchen employees in half to approximately $11, and they also discontinued some of the safety training programs.”
They have a history of alleged sexual misconduct, from a ‘Telegraph Forum’ article written in 2015 about Aramark’s misconduct in Ohio prison systems, “Inappropriate relationships, ranging from writing letters to sexual contact, has accounted for nearly half of the 64 Aramark employees fired during the first 10 months of the year.”
Accusations have been made of Aramark serving prisoners maggot-infested food “a news source from Youngstown, OH, reported maggot infestations in eight different Ohio prisons in 2014,” according to the ‘The Uproar’ article mentioned earlier.
Aramark has also been accused of violating labor laws according to a ‘College Media Network’ article written in 2008 “A food service worker in Michigan was apparently fired for reporting on unsanitary conditions, including rat droppings and mice in refrigerators.”
The divisions of Aramark share more than just a name. These two “very different organization[s]” share the same leadership team, the same stock, and the same logo. The Aramark Facilities and the other parts of Aramark are separated by the career tabs on their website, but are the same overarching company.
