I’ve had trouble with mass-produced chocolate for awhile, ever since I heard a presentation about the extent that child slavery is a part of cocoa harvesting in West Africa, but Hershey is apparently trying to scare me away from the delicious stuff forever:
For 400 foreign students, working at a Hershey’s chocolate packing plant in Palmyra, Pa., may be less sweet than it sounds.
The National Guestworker Alliance filed a complaint Wednesday on behalf of 400 international students who had apparently paid $3,000 to $6,000 to participate in a U.S.-certified cultural exchange program. The complaint, sent to the U.S. Department of State, says the students were exploited by Hershey Co. and that the company takes unfair advantage of the program.
[…]
The students, who hail from countries such as China, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Mongolia, Ghana and Thailand, were recruited at their universities to participate in the U.S. State Department J-1 visa program, described on a U.S. State Department website as an Exchange Visitor Program. The program leads to a three-month visa that allows students to work in the United States while learning about American culture and improving their English skills.
The goal of the program, according to the State Department’s site, is to foster “global understanding through educational and cultural exchange.”
Instead, says a representative of the National Guestworker Alliance, students who wound up at the Hershey’s plant were living in “economic captivity,” forced to pay for mandatory company housing that left them with $40 to $140 a week for 40 hours of work.
[…]
According to the complaint, conveniently made available to media, when the students complained about the violations of U.S. law, “they were threatened with deportation and other long term immigration consequences to remain quiet about the violations.”
This article appears in Aug 18-24, 2011.
Huh?
Looks like it was all going according to plan over at Palmyra, Pa:
“Economy in Palmyra, Pennsylvania”
at:
http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/pen…
sweet…
Guest worker? Sounds more like an internship. And one that pays. And pays more than they can likely earn in their own countries. Sounds like a better deal than most realize.
Thats better than what I have left after working a 40 hr week at Sears. By the time I pay rent, utilities, and gas to and from work. If I’m lucky I’ll have $10-$15 left for food. I try to do odd jobs on the side so I can eat and buy hygeine supply’s and occassionally buy clothing for work. Its rough.
No, it’s not better than you get at sears. These people are being paid $2-$3 an hour, and they owe that money back to hershey for lodging. On top of that, these people paid between $3000 to $4000 to come here and work for $2 an hour.
By the time the internship is up, they wont have even made half of their money back.
I remember my dad talking about working in the gold mine Sdak paying rent to the co ,buying food at the co store and by the end of the month owing the co. is this really what we want to go back to?
hi thank you for sharing this information .. exploiting laborers.. not so good.. please check also hersheys contractuals here in the philippines. they worked same as the regular employee but they are paid much lower compared to the regular employees. they are not enjoying benefits given to the regular but the workload is too large to handle.
hope you could pay attention with the same treatment with the contractuals.
This is old news and not just about Hershey company. Look at the requirements for graduation in certain college programs in any university of these United States. An internship is the same thing: students must pay to work, they are not compensated other than the “learning experience” sometimes for only six weeks and often up to twelve months. Some of these are overseas to countries mentioned in your article. Some are to businesses here in the USA. My daughter had to pay over $8000 to internship in USA and she is not unique to any one studying in America – natural born citizen or otherwise.
I am also wondering what this article is truly about? Children as slaves for companies in Africa, or “learning experience” unpaid programs for teens and young adults. This article is teetering on two very different issues.