Aramark

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ARAMARK Corporation (Template:NYSE) is a multinational corporation involved in the business of providing institutional services, including food and uniform service, to clients including hospitals, schools, businesses, and sports facilities. The company is based in Philadelphia.

The company was founded in 1959 by Davre Davidson and William Fishman as Automatic Retailers of America, whose business was in vending machines. ARA bought Philadelphia's Slater Systems, Inc., in 1961.

ARA's first international operation was the catering of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The next year, Automatic Retailers of America became ARA Services. In 1977, ARA entered the uniform business.

ARA changed its name to Aramark in 1994.

Part of Aramark's business involves prison catering and prison shops. The so called " Campaign Against Prison Slavery" alleges while serving this "captive market", Aramark billed Ohio's prisons as if had served 4,462,649 meals instead of the 2,803,722 meals actually served. The difference could represent an over-billing of some $2.08 million. Aramark subsequently lost the contract in 2000 when State employees put in a bid that was one million dollars lower than the company's bid.[1]

In January of 2004, Aramark agreed to pay more than $29,000 in gratuities to employees of the Southbridge Conference Center in Boston, Massachusetts after several employees filed complaints that the company was withholding their tips. According to the complaints, the tips were withheld from January of 2002 to August of 2003. (Boston Globe, Jan. 28, 2004.)

In 2005, several Aramark managers were implicated in an embezzlement scandal involving underreporting of the company's vending machine revenues.

Since Aramark's 2003 takeover of the environmental services at Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Texas, the company has been under fire for alleged malfeasance, breach of contract, incompetence and rampant workplace bullying. While the hospital's board members have profusely praised the company, most other staff members have been extremely critical of Aramark's managers, of its treatment of its employees and of the quality of the services provided. Several former Scott & White employees have successfully sued the company, while others have settled out of court. Scott & White, a major medical center with satellite clinics throughout central Texas, is one of Aramark's largest customers.

Aramark is also the operator of several of the United States national parks, including Denali National Park in Alaska.

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Criticism

Workplace bullying activist Robert Nisbet, who worked for both Scott & White and Aramark, has studied Aramark's management techniques in depth. According to Mr. Nisbet, Aramark's approach to management is to create "a culture of fear and uncertainty, an atmosphere in which the rule of management is absolute and unquestioned. The Aramark corporate culture is similar to the world of George Orwell's novel 1984. Most employees are too insecure to criticize management. Any blue-collar employee who does complain is fired, thus disappearing from Aramark permanently and becoming, in the language of the novel, an unperson. In the novel, thoughtcrime, the questioning of authority in any way, shape or form, meant death. For Aramark employees, questioning management in any way, shape or form on even the most minor issue is thoughtcrime, and invariably leads to the financial 'death' of unemployment.

"Aramark never builds the facilities it operates," Mr. Nisbet adds. "Rather, it takes over facilities that have already been built, expels the more experienced staff members and runs the facilities for its own profit. It survives only when it can create a monopoly; the customers either get their goods and services from Aramark, or they do without. It is the corporate version of the cuckoo, surviving by hatching in somebody else's nest and expelling the rightful occupants."

The company is frequently mentioned in discussions of the disadvantages of outsourcing.

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