American employees of French food services company Sodexo have traveled to France to ask the company for better wages and more rights in the workplace at Sodexo's annual shareholders meeting.. The company has around 110,000 workers in the United States. The employees are backed by the Service Employees International Union and other French and British unions. The American workers said that their wages were not high enough and they were discouraged from joining unions. They also asked that Sodexo make a larger effort to hire black executives. A representative from Sodexo said that they support workers' rights to unionize and that they have made progress since settling in 2005 with thousands of black employees who said they were barred from promotions.
See "Sodexo's US Workers Seek Same Rights as French", Franny Dassie, abc.com, January 25, 2010