Cintas is the biggest uniform and laundry business in the country. 
It's a very profitable company, with record profits last year of 
more than $200 million. And the people at the top are making 
off like bandits -- the Chairman, Richard Farmer, is listed by Forbes as
 one of the richest people in American, with a net worth of more than $1.6 billion.  

Richard Farmer spent enough of that money to become the 
second largest donor to the Republican Party.  In the 2000 election,
 John Ashcroft was one of Farmer's favorite recipients of 
campaign cash.  A the same time, Cintas' workers have been struggling 
to get a fair raise while being forced to cope with rising health care 
charges and without any secure retirement plan.  Most 
workers at the Cintas laundries make only $6 to $8 an hour.  


Cintas employees have been subject to numerous cases of harassment 
and discrimination.  The company was forced to pay more
 than $200,000 in damages after illegally discriminating 
against a female employee and then firing her for complaining.  Another 
African American employee was told by a manager that 
"Cintas didn't promote minorities" and that "upper management did not 
want black employees working in supervisory capacities."  
All told, there have been more than 40 lawsuits against Cintas for 
discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age and disability. 
 Many of the plaintiffs in these discrimination lawsuits have been 
employees in management positions-the same type of positions
that Cintas is recruiting for at our campus.

Cintas has a long and sordid history of fighting its workers.  The
 company has been cited numerous times, both in the United 
States and Canada, for committing violations of Federal labor law.  
In addition, the company regularly cheats its employees out of 
the wages they've earned.  In California, Cintas employees recently
 won a class action suit worth millions of dollars when the 
company was found guilty of cheating its workers out of overtime pay. 

In January 2003, Cintas employees throughout the United States and 
Canada began organizing with a union called UNITE.  Cintas 
reacted by hiring anti-union attorneys, industrial psychologists, 
and a regiment of security guards to record union activity and 
intimidate employees.  Currently, there are 82 pending Federal 
labor law charges against Cintas.