ARAMARK
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| Aramark | |
| Type | Public (NYSE: RMK) (soon to taken private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1959 (as Automatic Retailers of America) |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
<tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Key people</th><td>Davre Davidson and William Fishman, founders |
Aramark Corporation (NYSE: RMK) is a professional services organization, providing food services, facilities management, hospitality services, and uniforms and career apparel to health care institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, businesses, prisons, senior living facilities, parks and resorts, correctional institutions, conference centers, convention centers, and public safety professionals around the world. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Aramark has approximately 242,500 employees serving clients in 20 countries.
In Fortune magazine's 2006 list of "America's Most Admired Companies," Aramark was ranked number one in its industry, consistently ranking since 1998 as one of the top three most admired companies in its industry as evaluated by peers and industry analysts. The company was also ranked first in its industry in the 2006 Fortune 500 survey.
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[edit] History Highlights
1936
Davre Davidson begins the Los Angeles company that will eventually become Aramark.
1959
Davidson and William Fishman merge their operations and the company becomes ARA (Automatic Retailers of America)
1969
ARA officially becomes ARA Services, to reflect its growing range of businesses.
1977
ARA entered the uniform business.
1983
Joseph Neubauer is elected CEO of ARA Services.
1994
ARA Services evolves into Aramark to reflect the change in its business relationships and its commitment to customers.
2001
Aramark returns to the New York Stock Exchange as a public company under the RMK ticker.
[edit] Leadership
Joseph Neubauer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
L. Frederick Sutherland, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Bart J. Colli, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary
Timothy P. Cost, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs
Lynn B. McKee, Executive Vice President, Human Resources
Andrew Kerin, President, Aramark Domestic Food, Hospitality, and Facilities
Ravi K. Saligram, President, Aramark International
Thomas J. Vozzo, President, Aramark Uniform and Career Apparel Inc.
[edit] Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Aramark are: Lawrence Babbio, Patricia Barron, Leonard Coleman, Ronald Davenport, Thomas Kean, James Ksansnak, Joseph Neubauer, James E. Preston, Ronald Sargent, and Karl von der Heyden.
[edit] Legal Issues
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. Environmental services include non-medical departments like laundry, waste management, security, housekeeping, patient transport and food services. 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. Aramark agreed to hire Scott & White's environmental services personnel en masse and to allow them to keep both their current pay levels and their years of seniority. After hiring them, Aramark began to systematically dismiss the long-term workers, replacing them with new employees at much lower wage levels. Several former Scott & White employees have successfully sued the company, while others have settled out of court. Allegations against the company have included false documentation and defamation of character. Scott & White, a major medical center with satellite clinics throughout central Texas, is one of Aramark's largest customers in the region.
Drayton McLane, Jr., the owner of the Houston Astros, is a member of Scott & White's Board of Trustees and a major stockholder in Aramark. This has led some Scott & White staff members to accuse McLane of violating conflict of interest laws.
Aramark has also been taken to task for a December 1999 incident in which a vendor at Giants Stadium kept selling beer to a man who was clearly drunk. Later, the drunk driver caused a traffic acident in which a 2-year-old child was paralyzed from the neck down. The family sued Aramark, claiming that the service company shared responsibility with the driver. Though the stadium has a limit to how much beer a customer can buy, the driver got around it by bribing a vendor. Though Aramark kept the case in court for over six years, the child's family eventually scored an initial win at a jury trial.<ref name=Family-successfully-sues-Aramark> Family successfully sues Aramark [1]</ref> This victory, however was overturned by an appeals court on technical grounds, and is now awaiting retrial, pending a further appeal of the appellate court decision.<ref name=Jury-award-against-Aramark overturned,-new-trial-ordered> Court overturns jury award against stadium conesssionaire [2], accessed August 5, 2005</ref>
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.[citation needed]
From January thru April of 2006, Arturo Luna, an Aramark employee, sexually harassed a junior and a freshman girl off the campus after Niles North is over. He was eventually fired on April 6, 2006, and arrested for rape.[3]
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
| ARAMARK Corporation |
|---|
| Corporate Directors: Lawrence Babbio • Patricia Barron • Leonard Coleman • Ronald Davenport • Thomas Kean • James Ksansnak • Joseph Neubauer |
| Philadelphia-based Corporations (Within the Delaware Valley) |
|---|
| Philadelphia-based Fortune 500 Corporations (by size): Sunoco | Comcast | CIGNA | Aramark | Rohm and Haas Company | Crown Holdings Incorporated | Lincoln National Corporation |
| Philadelphia-based Fortune 1000 Corporations (by size): Companies listed above, plus Sovereign Bancorp | Pep Boys | FMC Corporation |
| Delaware Valley-based Fortune 1000 Corporations (by size): Companies listed above, plus AmerisourceBergen | DuPont Company | Campbell Soup | Toll Brothers | Unisys | Jones Apparel Group | UGI Corporation | Ikon Office Solutions | Universal Health Services | SunGard Data Systems | Teleflex | Airgas | Vishay Intertechnology | Charming Shoppes | Commerce Bancorp | Hercules Inc. | Genesis HealthCare | Ametek |
| Philadelphia-based and Delaware Valley-based non-public or externally owned corporations (by size): GlaxoSmithKline (US Operations) | Burlington Coat Factory | Forman Mills |
Categories: Wikipedia articles needing style editing | Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange | Articles with unsourced statements | Companies established in 1959 | Companies based in Philadelphia | Fortune 1000 | Multinational companies | Business services companies of the United States | Hospitality companies of the United States
