Rankin Inlet firm joins forces with service-industry giant

CHARLOTTE PETRIE

The country’s largest group of privately owned Inuit development corporations has teamed up with an international service management company in the hopes of tapping in to the lucrative mining industry.

The new partners share not only the same business interests, they also have ties to the never-ending private health-care debate and an affinity for drawing negative publicity.

Rankin Inlet-based Piruqsaijit Ltd. has partnered with internationally known Sodexho in an effort to unite the companies’ strongest assets in providing service operations at mining camps across Nunavut.

With Piruqsaijit’s northern connections and Sodexho’s extensive background in facility management, the two companies anticipate taking over everything from food services and housekeeping to equipment for roads and camp administration.

“We’ve had some discussions with several [mining companies] already, and we are very pleased,” said Hilary Rebeiro, Piruqsaijit’s general manager.

But mining isn’t the companies’ only prospect. They also have their sites set on the health-care industry, where the privatization of non-core services such as cafeterias and laundries is becoming increasingly common.

And that fact could one day bring the alliance to Iqaluit. If the years of talk about a new hospital in the capital city ever materializes into an actual building, there’s a good chance patients will be eating Sodexho-prepared food.

“Wherever a hospital is to be built, we will be there to propose services,” said Emmanuel Massy, Sodexho Canada’s vice-president.

“Piruqsaijit definitely has expertise up north in terms of logistics, transport of fuel, real estate and labour provision,” Massy continued. “We want to go after some health-care prospects. So, we intend to leverage the expertise of both companies.”

Backgrounds in the health industry and a shared business interest are not the only things these two companies in common.

When it comes to the all-too-sensitive topic of private health-care services in Canada, both companies have felt the heat from the heavy spotlight of public criticism.

Last fall, Ed Picco, Nunavut’s health minister, publicly doubted Piruqsaijit’s scheme to set up a private diagnostic service for breast cancer in Rankin Inlet.

Fearing such a private service would be in violation of the Canada Health Act, Picco ordered his officials to review the proposal.

The computerized laser scanning device was to be used for profit in a private clinic, which would violate the act and risk future funding from the federal government, Picco said at the time.

The project subsequently lost its momentum, but Rebeiro insists it hasn’t completely fallen by the wayside. He also doesn’t feel the idea met with public criticism.

“We were perceived [as] trying to help Nunavummiut get the things they need, and we will continue working at it.”

Just months before Piruqsaijit found itself in the glare of media attention, Sodexho was on major damage control in British Columbia, where it was being courted by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government to assume the provision of non-core services in the province’s hospitals.

Angered by rumours of Sodexho’s anti-union leanings, the local hospital employees’ union started digging. The results were shocking.

It was discovered that Sodexho had been slapped with three citations of serious violations of worker health and safety, and fined more than US$9,000, the Cape Cod Times reported on Jan. 30, 2001.

The fines were a result of an incident in which a Sodexho cafeteria worker’s severed thumb ended up in someone’s sandwich.

The blade of a high-speed vegetable slicer cut off part of a high school cafeteria worker’s thumb. The tip of her thumb ended up in a student’s turkey and tomato sandwich the next day.

The local board of health determined that the machine had not been dissembled and cleaned immediately after the accident.

Sodexho was also linked to an E.coli breakout at an elementary school in Wisconsin in October 2000. Sodexho was the school’s food service provider when 21 students aged five to nine contracted the virus. Four of those children were hospitalized.

Since March 1998, 54 lawsuits involving Sodexho have been filed in U.S. federal court between the company and its employees, including 10 current and former managers. Thirty-eight of those cases were employment discrimination lawsuits.

In 2000, the company was forced to revise its employee handbook after the U.S. National Labor Relations Board found that some of the company policies interfered with workers’ basic rights. The manual stated employees were not allowed to talk to outsiders about working conditions.

Massy defended the reports, believing them to be simply snapshots of a bigger picture.

“Taking an extract of one controversy out of so many success stories is easy, but we employ 7,000 people in Canada, with 280 clients.

“We have one of the strictest food hygiene programs in the industry. When you run 280 sites in one country like Canada, it’s an everyday struggle with every aspect of safety and hygiene,” Massy said.

Rebeiro also isn’t concerned about Sodexho’s publicity woes or questionable reputation.

“We don’t believe they’ve had previous problems. There is always someone who will find something to be critical of by taking a word or a phrase and blowing things out of proportion. We are not concerned.” Rebeiro said.