One of Britain’s largest military outsourcing contracts might be awarded to company facing charges of racism.
Sodexo, a multinational company, is the frontrunner to win a contract to run six military bases in the Mediterranean. The deal is worth up to £100m over three years.
The winner will be announced next month.
The company’s highly lucrative defence division is facing claims that its personnel department, which is meant to police employees’ behaviour, has been systematically “ethnically cleansed” of non-white staff.
An employee was actually hit by her director who said it was “punch a black week”.
Under public contracts regulations, a public body may exclude a bidder or reject a bid where it is found the organisation has “committed grave misconduct in the course of their business”.
At the defence department’s Colchester offices, one black employee complained she was told that certain rooms and corridors in the personnel department were out of bounds because they were for “whites only”. This she says was dismissed by executives as “banter”.
Black staff felt they were being labeled as “lazy”. The company is also accused, by at least one employee, of “creating and inciting a hostile climate of distrust against difference”.
In one instance, a white male executive allegedly had to remonstrate with a junior colleague who, upon the arrival of a black employee, said: “There is another black one, they are taking over.”
In October 2012 an African-Caribbean female manager was punched by a top executive of the defence division, who was a white man. When she asked why he had done this, he responded: “It’s punch a black week.”
Another two non-white female employees of the human resources department are currently taking the company to court over claims of racism and sexism.
In the first case, a black female personnel adviser claims she was ostracised by members of her team. During an investigation into homophobic bullying in June last year, it is alleged, a colleague bemoaned to her the fact he could not use the “n-word” any more for fear of offending people.
Source: The Guardian