TORONTO (CUP) — Unite Here, an organization representing over 50,000 members in Canada, including hospitality industry employees, will be helping Sodexho workers unionize.

According to Unite Here’s organizing coordinator, Courney Radic, Sodexho workers at York are completely overworked and underpaid.

“There’s over 100 Sodexho employees on campus who . . . work for an incredibly rich company. They’re getting paid really low wages and are suffering from tremendous workloads,” said Radic.

Radic further states that non-union workers do not have any job and health insurance guarantees.

“Being non-union, you are constantly living in fear of ‘Am I getting fired tomorrow,’ ‘Am I going to lose my health insurance tomorrow’, ‘Will my hours be cut tomorrow’; and having a union means stability in your job, and that means seniority rights,” said Radic, adding that seniority is a union word that does not exist outside of a collective agreement.

Sodexho representatives say it is the employees’ decision to cast a ballot and choose if they would like to be represented.

“Our employees have a right to consider representation and that is something that we will honour and respect,” said Jon Kristjanson, VP Communications for Sodexho.

“They have a voice if they would like to be represented by a third party and . . . we encourage them to educate themselves, understand what the opportunity is at hand and make an educated decision from that and we respect that accordingly,” he added.

Kristjanson also added that since Unite Here represents hospitality workers, they stand to reason that they are always looking for new members.

“The organizing effort is obviously to solicit encouragement of our employees to vote in favour of being represented and our employees are going to discuss that among themselves and make a decision. I don’t know personally how the employees feel about that, but whether they are thinking positively towards enrolling or not, in the end of the day it will be determined by the right to exercise their vote.”

According to Radic, upon organizing, Sodexho locations have put up “No Solicitation” signs to intimidate employee.

“‘No Solicitation’ signs went up in all of their sites and what the union finds is particularly interesting is that for me, unions are talking to each other and talking to union organizers about their workplace problems. Putting up ‘No Solicitation’ signs is just a union busting tactic that they’re trying to use to scare the workers [into believing] that they are not allowed to talk to us.”

In a recently released statement Sodexho employee Wendy Wang said that by joining a union, workers have a right to do things and change their workplace.

“I want [to join a] union because I need better pay, better benefits, a reasonable workload and to be treated fairly, respectfully,” it read.

However, Kristjanson said he feels a union cannot guarantee workers job security.

“If you simply read some of the major newspapers today, 30,000 employees are going to lose their jobs at General Motors, which is a huge company that’s paid well and has great benefits for the most part, but unfortunately if the model doesn’t allow them to keep those employees under their employment, this is what happens.”

“Sodexho has a solid business model. We are an employer of 320,000 people worldwide and we’re a company that’s growing [and] providing some interesting employment opportunities, but it doesn’t guarantee that in every case all employees will get what they want out of their employee/employer relationship,” he added.

Unite Here also helped to organize Sodexho employees at the University of Toronto last spring, with less successful results. In September 2004, the decision by Sodexho employees at U of T to create a union, resulted in the indefinite suspension of two union organizers two months later.

The decision was later overturned and the union organizers were reinstated the next week. Sodexho has since then ignored a petition to form a union signed by most of their U of T workforce.

Sodexho operates at least three major eateries on U of T’s campus.