Two employees suspended last week by U of T Sodexho have been reinstated, and will be back at work today, The Varsity has learned. Maria Ferraz and Goretti Frias, both long-time workers for the campus’ food-service provider Sodexho, each received a written disciplinary warning from the company concerning their workplace behaviour following a review of their suspensions on the weekend.
Ferraz and Frias were suspended last Wednesday after management received a complaint that the two women harassed another employee. After a review of the incident was made at Sodexho’s office at U of T, the company manager’s backed off from initial allegations of outright verbal harassment. Instead the women were alleged to have made “offensive verbal comments” in the workplace.
Frias told The Varsity the complaint concerned some jokes she and Ferraz made in the presence of their Sodexho supervisor. The supervisor, whom Frias has known for over a decade, later filed a complaint with Sodexho’s management.
Frias and Ferraz were summoned to the management’s office late Wednesday afternoon and, without receiving written notification, were informed they were being suspended. Their manager also advised them that an investigation into their comments was under way.
“They had nothing on paper,” said Frias. “They just told us we were suspended until further notice.” The pair were not given specifics about the nature of the complaint, and after the ten-minute meeting concluded, were escorted out of the building.
“We were surprised,” said Ferraz. “Harassment, that’s a pretty serious word. We didn’t know what was going on.”
Both women met with representatives from Sodexho’s management, including general manager Hadi Chahin, for approximately three hours on Saturday to discuss the incident. The meeting culminated in their reinstatement, with full pay for the time they spent off work, and written reprimands.
Frias has worked for Sodexho for over fifteen years, and has never received any written complaints about her behaviour on the job. She suspects her suspension had more to do with her membership on the organizing committee aiming to unionize Sodexho employees at U of T, as opposed to any jokes she made at work. Both she and Ferraz said that the supervisor who alleged harassment is anti-union.
Ferraz, who has been employed with Sodexho for eight years without reprimand, echoed a similar sentiment.
“They did this to scare the other employees,” she said. “They know we are for the union. We are always making jokes, and this has never happened before.”
Frias and Ferraz are both a part of an ongoing effort to certify UNITE-HERE, an existing Canadian labour union, as the collective bargaining agent for the over 200 Sodexho workers on campus. UNITE-HERE stands for the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile Employees & Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees.
UNITE-HERE organizer Patricia Chong, who sat in on Saturday’s review, agreed with Frias and Ferraz’s assessment that their suspensions were connected to their organizing. “I am very suspicious,” she said. “When it comes to two union leaders, standard Sodexho labour practices are thrown out the window.”
Both women said the incident caused them considerable stress. “It affected me personally,” said Ferraz. “I knew [the employee who filed the complaint] very well. We were like sisters,” she said. “This affected my personal life,” Frias added. “We were [treated] like criminals.”
Sodexho’s head office, located in Burlington, initially advised The Varsity on Friday that a review of the employees’ actions would be occurring over the weekend. However, after the review concluded, Sodexho’s human resources department did not respond to requests for comment.
