This Wednesday, corporations from all over the country will be visiting UW-Madison to recruit fresh minds into the real world. The Letters & Sciences Career Services are providing the opportunity to give students a chance to make the connections necessary to graduate and fall into the job of their dreams.
Well, it is not so rosy. Many of the companies coming are guilty of heinous crimes around the world and are notorious for ensuring the continuation of wage disparity through race, gender and ability.
One of these corporations has been under a lot of heat due to its bad labor practices and racist/sexist management. Cintas Corporation is the leading company in uniform rental and industrial laundry business, and last year had over $2.2 billion in sales with over $234 million in profits.
As Cintas has made it big, it has consequently ensured low wages and rising health care charges to its employees. The CEO recently gave himself a $51,000 raise and the chairman of the board was listed in Forbes as one of the richest people in America. With this great success, workers have filed class action lawsuits against Cintas.
Recently, Cintas workers in California won a classaction lawsuit worth millions of dollars because Cintas was cheating its employees out of overtime pay. In Pennsylvania, Cintas was ordered to pay employees more than $15,000 for failure to keep accurate records and pay overtime. There are at least seven other lawsuits, citations or fines due because of their failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.
Workers are currently fighting to organize and create a voice. Cintas is obviously anti-union, has so far succeeded in numerous anti-union campaigns and has been cited at least 25 times for violating federal labor law. As its workers continually face abuse, Cintas has also been sued for violating state and federal clean-water laws.
With all of this behind Cintas, it only gets worse. There has been a consistent pattern of discrimination against its workers. More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the company for racial, sexual, age and disability discrimination. When a black employee filed a discrimination suit in San Leandro, Calif., a plant manager reportedly told him that \Cintas didn't promote minorities,"" and ""upper management did not want black employees working in supervisory capacities.""
Numerous cases have proven Cintas to be just another backward corporation that believes that through exploitation and cronyism, profit can be maximized. Whether it be through violating environmental codes or ignoring the minimum wage, Cintas has succeeded in making the list of ""evil corporations.""
So, why would this university feel the need to bring Cintas to campus for recruitment? Cintas will continue profiting within a system that caters to the rich, and ensures the continuation of wage disparity and a thick ""glass ceiling."" In the classroom, we learn of the inequality facing us in the real world and typically it is presented negatively. This is all contradicted when the university decides to invite a corporation like Cintas to come and recruit students to join its crusade for profit.
Several years ago when students had a sit-in to force administrators to sign on to a better sweatshop monitoring group, the university was forced to listen. Of course, that was not the end of the fight for a ""sweat-free"" university. While it was a huge step closer, the university is still involved with poor labor practices, directly and indirectly.
As students and faculty, we have an obligation to keep UW-Madison in check. Whether it's our contract with Adidas, temporary worker exploitation or racist corporations recruiting our students, there needs to be a strong voice ensuring that the university's actions are in accordance with the social responsibility of this institution to promote human rights.
