It’s no secret that national Latino organizations can sometimes cozy up to companies that detrimentally impact our community. However, last week this trend was taken to a new extreme. LATINO Magazine just released their annual Top 100 list where they honor “companies providing the most opportunities for Latinos” and that are supportive of the Latino community from a philanthropic, hiring and diversity viewpoint. One of the businesses they chose to honor was Aramark. Formally, Aramark is known as a multinational corporation that focuses on facilities management, food and uniform services. Informally, they are infamous for abusing of their workforce of color.
I should know, I spent the past three years fighting against them at American University. They manage food and custodial operations at American, hiring Latino immigrants from Central America for low-paying custodial positions and totally disregarding their safety and well-being. The company cut the hours of 40 workers disqualifying them from receiving benefits, treated some employees as criminals, and even ignored Doctor’s notes and overworked employees injured on the job. Just this March I posted on Facebook the story of Maria Diaz, an elderly custodial worker who had cleaned the university for 30 year and was forced to clean two buildings on her own each day. The story went viral and was quickly covered by Univision, Telemundo and other media outlets. But even as more workers began speaking out and the evidence of their mistreatment became irrefutable, Aramark stayed silent. Privately, however, one of Aramark’s managers tried shamelessly to intimidate Maria into silence by taking her and me to court on trumped-up charges of harassment that were immediately thrown out.
Aramark’s horrible track record of mistreating their minority employees is bad enough, but it’s worth noting that they don’t do a very good job of serving their customers, either. Over the years, Aramark has faced countless lawsuits and payed hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for violating contracts. Aramark loves saying that with them, “you can expect more -- more savings,” which usually means cutting corners with disastrous results. In 2014, Aramark made headlines when maggots were found in one Ohio kitchen they ran and for underfeeding inmates. Aramark ultimately had to pay $272,000 in fines to the state of Ohio.
A year later, the Michigan Department of Corrections awarded a prison food contract to Aramark to cut state spending. Unfortunately, the savings came at a high cost. Email records from correctional staff reveal that an Aramark employee ordered inmates at one prison to serve cake that had been partially eaten by rats, while inmates at a another facility were ordered to serve food from trash cans. The state fined Aramark $200,000 and canceled the contract entirely, but the damage was done, as 370 unionized state workers had been fired when Aramark was awarded the contract.
With a company as large as Aramark, scandals are bound to happen. But Aramark itself it is a different story. Not only did they have problems in Ohio and Michigan, but reports of their abuses and contract violations can be found in Florida, Indiana, California, Arkansas, New Jersey, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and even Canada.
When exploitation becomes this pervasive and blatant, one has to question whether it’s just a routine case of a few bad apples in the chain, or it’s the culture being promoted from the top.
Aramark recently sent out a press release about being honored three years in a row by LATINO Magazine. "We are proud to once again be recognized by LATINO Magazine as one of the top companies providing opportunities for Latinos," said Lynn B. McKee, EVP of Human Resources for Aramark. They love providing opportunities for Latinos so much that they were once fined by the city of Philadelphia to the tune of $400,000 for inclusion contract violations. They skirted minority contract requirements for their contract with the city’s prison system. In a statement released by the city, Inspector General Amy Kurland said that “Everyone deserves a fair shot to compete for contracts in Philadelphia, and [Aramark’s] scheme denied opportunities to legitimate [minority-, women-, disabled- business enterprises].”
Perhaps these problems can be overlooked if we look at hiring. It’s true that Aramark employs many Latinos, but does that really merit an award? Recognizing Aramark as one of the top places for Latinos to work because of their ‘inclusive hiring practices’ is like giving a gold star to Donald Trump for hiring Latinos to work on his construction projects – it’s a marriage of convenience and a deplorable exploitation of socioeconomic conditions under the auspices of affirmative action.
This endorsement, while at face value a seemingly trivial matter, is in fact a slap in the face to all Latino employees at Aramark and serves as a PR shield for the company. Whenever a grassroots organization such as Progress Michigan or a union wants to hold them accountable for their mistreatment of workers and clients, their PR teams will bring up this recognition as a defense against claims of abuse.
As a respected magazine among Latinos, LATINO Magazine has a duty to serve as a watchdog for the community, not lazily shower criminally negligent management with accolades for passing an arbitrary “diversity” benchmark in their hiring practices. I hope the staff at LATINO Magazine can learn to do even a shred of their due diligence and not include Aramark in this list come next year.
Carlos Mark Vera is an immigrant, advocate, strategist and self-described professional chingon. He founded Justice for AU Workers, one of the largest student-led labor coalitions in the country that advocates for workers of color. While in school, he spearheaded several social media and grassroots campaigns that led to the creation of a full ride scholarship program for the children of Aramark, one of the first of its kind in country. He has appeared on Telemundo, Fox News, District News and Univision. You can reach him at carlmvera@gmail.com or follow him on twitter at @CarlosAngeles25 or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CarlosMarkVera