Sodexo USA filed RICO (racketeering) charges yesterday against SEIU over the union’s ruthless coordinated leverage campaign. In yesterday’s press release the company accuses SEIU of an “illegal campaign of extortion” that includes “blackmail, vandalism, trespass, harassment, and lobbying law violations designed to steer business away from Sodexo USA and harm the company.” Sodexo first entered the purple crosshairs in 2009 when SEIU/Workers United made attempts to raid UNITEHERE Sodexo shops and the company supported UNITEHERE bargaining rights. Since that time the SEIU attacks on Sodexo have grown increasingly more ugly and virulent including threats to Sodexo executives, pressure on public officials to launch investigations against the company or cancel Sodexo contracts and multiple highly publicized protests and boycotts on college campuses around the country. Last year SEIU created a dummy consumer organization to gather complaints against the company and a bogus investors group to counsel prospective investors to stay away from Sodexo because of “labor unrest.” SEIU also retained the services of former actor turned professional protestor Danny Glover to ratchet up the “human rights violation” angle to a global level through an “independent report” by TransAfrica. (TransAfrica is headed up by Glover with several union bosses on its board of directors including Workers United president and Andy Stern’s BFF Bruce Raynor.) Glover, Raynor and Stern together made advanced arrangements to have themselves theatrically arrested outside the Sodexo investors meeting last April. All that said, it’s the smaller everyday stunts by overzealous organizers that make for a truly toxic corporate smear campaign and SEIU zealots haven’t spared the unconscionable in their attack on Sodexo — sprinkling plastic roaches in Sodexo buffet lines; suggesting to hospital patients and their families that patient meals “could” contain mold, insect parts and rat dropping with absolutely no grounds for those suggestions; harassing Sodexo employees on the job; even sneaking into elementary schools to disrupt children’s lunches. Sodexo is seeking an injunction to stop SEIU actions against the company along with monetary damages.
