As the Bloomsbury Master Plan (see CG37) continues to take shape, there have been concerns raised about some of the companies the university is work- ing with. Sodexo, operating as the main catering supplier at UCL as Food Fed- eration, has been criticised by organisa- tions such as Human Rights Watch for persistent human rights violations, and is also the largest provider of private prison services in the UK. A TransAfrica report found that Sodexo uses “the lowest- road employment practices which offer workers the lowest wages possible and deprives them of their basic human dig- nity.”
In 2011 students from SOAS ran a successful campaign to oust the French company from their university, with worries centring around the unethical actions of the multinational business. The now redundant University of Lon- don Union also voted unanimously to institute a boycott of Sodexo for “gross violations of workers’ rights” in the same year.
Sodexo has fingers in many pies. It is one of the key drivers behind the growth of privatised prisons in the UK. Recent- ly a subsidiary, Sodexo Justice Services, won the largest number of contracts to run probation services in England and Wales. However their performance has come under fire, especially at England’s northernmost prison, HMP Northum- berland. Having cut a third of staff at the prison, inspectors in September found that the prison was “not sufficiently good” in all but one of their criteria.
What’s more, in August 2013 Sodexo Justice Services was criticised in an offi- cial report for subjecting a female pris- oner to “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”, which “appears to amount to torture” at HMP Bronzefield in Ash- ford, Surrey. The woman was kept seg- regated from other prisoners in an “un- kempt and squalid” prison cell for more than five years.
It seems Sodexo will be further ex- panding its food empire at UCL as the plans for the new student centre reveal that the cafe created there will be run privately. David Dahlborn, UCL’s most fervent establishment-worrier, expressed his displeasure at the proposed plans. Talking to The Cheese Grater, he thought the plans would create a “degree factory”, saying: “Students will be expected to come here, study, buy overpriced coffee and then leave. There are no recreational spaces, no bookable rooms for societies and no union-run bars or cafes.”
On the subject of the decision to designate the huge planned café as non union-run, Dahlborn raged: “Without a sliver of doubt this means that it will be out-sourced to a business that will be taking a large chunk of money that could have gone into UCLU and putting it into private profit. It is evident from the plans that profit has been put before stu- dent wellbeing again.”