Tricked Foreign Students Stage Walkout Of Hershey’s Chocolate Factory

By on August 18, 2011 in News 29

hersheyRemember that Simpsons episode in which Bart is conned into becoming a slave on a French grape farm through an “exchange student” program? The New York Times reports:

Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.

In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.

Their experience of American society has been very different from what they expected. “There is no cultural exchange, none, none,” said Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalien, China. “It is just work, work faster, work.”

ohn Fleming, a State Department spokesman, said officials were aware of the students’ protest and had sent staff members to Hershey, Pa., where the candy company is based, to investigate. “It is our job to ensure that all J-1 visa holders are accorded their rights under all provisions of the Summer Work Travel program,” Mr. Fleming said.

The arrangements that brought the foreign students to work at the Eastern Distribution Center III, a vast warehouse in a trim industrial park near Hershey, the American chocolate capital, involved layers of contractors.

The students said they mainly placed blame on the organization that manages the J-1 visa program for the State Department, the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A., which is based in California.

Rick Anaya, chief executive of the council, said he had brought about 6,000 J-1 visa students to the United States this summer. Mr. Anaya said he had tried to respond to the Palmyra workers’ complaints. “We are not getting any cooperation,” he said. “We are trying to work with these kids. All this negativity is hurting an excellent program. We would go out of our way to help them, but it seems like someone is stirring them up out there.”

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  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Go to a hotel in vegas or atlantic city…anywhere with the size to have constant tourists. You’ll find plenty of smiling teens and pretty faces in staff…all snow white and with English names on their nametags…

    …and thick Eastern Euro accents. These kids work for room board and tiny stipend…then go home with work/credit toward “Hospitality” degrees. The kicker is that so few know or care…because these kids ‘pass’ as white teens…and they take up jobs that pay premium service sector wages…not rock bottom farm slots for pennies a bushel. So while all the hickabillies get up in arms and moan and piss about invading wetbacks crossing the Rio Grande…whole piles of Euro-teens are getting fleeced for cheap labor while they fill up job slots that used to be all-American as apple pie.

    Good for this group of kids for tumbling the scam and getting some light shed on the subject. The sooner more people wake up to how corporations acquire near-slave labor…the sooner we can get people angry enough to outlaw it.

  • CancerJesus

    Well said. 

  • News

    How were they tricked? This really is life in the US; working your butt off for massive corporations and not having enough to cover the basics in life is the way of life here.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Huh, why didn’t they go to Cedar Point?  Its a much better way to learn english than working in a packaging plant.  Although the last time I was there I was on mushrooms and after five minutes with a thai girl attempting to tell me where the bathrooms were I began to wonder if I could speak english.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Huh, why didn’t they go to Cedar Point?  Its a much better way to learn english than working in a packaging plant.  Although the last time I was there I was on mushrooms and after five minutes with a thai girl attempting to tell me where the bathrooms were I began to wonder if I could speak english.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Huh, why didn’t they go to Cedar Point?  Its a much better way to learn english than working in a packaging plant.  Although the last time I was there I was on mushrooms and after five minutes with a thai girl attempting to tell me where the bathrooms were I began to wonder if I could speak english.

  • HT

    This exact thing is probably happening in all the hotels in America that use this visa program.  I know for sure it is happening in Sheridan Wyoming at the Holiday Inn..  The kids have to work 6 days to get 36 hours at the rate of $8.00 per hour.  They aren’t allowed a break for lunch unless they clock off. They are hustled constantly by their superviser.  8 of them  live in a three bedroom apartment which cost the employer $600 per month for which he charges each 8 of them $210 per month or $1760!  Half of them sleep on mattresses on the floor.  All of them are very unhappy with their “experience ” in wyoming.

  • Anonymous

    “There is no cultural exchange, none, none,” said Zhao Huijiao, a
    20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalien, China.
    “It is just work, work faster, work.”

    I dunno. Sounds like they got the full American culture right there.

  • mkc

    This is very unfortunate, but there are other agencies working to place J-1 visa holders that don’t have this issue.  This visa program should be monitored, but I hope it doesn’t end or slow down placement.

  • mkc

    This is very unfortunate, but there are other agencies working to place J-1 visa holders that don’t have this issue.  This visa program should be monitored, but I hope it doesn’t end or slow down placement.

  • http://www.facebook.com/chinagreenelvis Eric Vinyard

    YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY SIR!

  • Okarin

    tricked when compared to the marketing they get and it doesn’t have to be t.v. advertising

  • StillAtMyMoms

    Ha, the foreigners wanted to experience America, right?  Well, they definitely experienced first-hand a slice of bona fide, laissez faire, deregulated, pro-corporate, Republican life in America.  Doesn’t it suck?  Welcome to the land of the FEE and home of the revenue unit.  You’re not human in this country; you’re simply a resource required to maximize output in order to appease the shareholders on non-livable wages.  We have regressed so much and I commend each and every one of them for having the balls to walk out like that.  Hopefully they return to their home country and appreciate their social programs even more so.  (Well, the European ones at least.)

    Continue to vote in the false left-right paradigm and this is what you’ll always get.  Screw Perry, Obama, Bachmann, Romney, and even Paul.  Grassroot a completely legitimate individual who believes in egalitarian values and actually gives two shits about our decaying planet (RE: free energy).  We have the social networking technology; there should be no excuse.

  • Wanooski

    Free energy is a MYTH! Physical impossibility. You know who believed in egalitarian values and our decaying planet? Indigenous people and those not tainted by, or who recognize the terrible reality of, civilization.

  • Wanooski

    Free energy is a MYTH! Physical impossibility. You know who believed in egalitarian values and our decaying planet? Indigenous people and those not tainted by, or who recognize the terrible reality of, civilization.

  • StillAtMyMoms

    Very close-minded of you, shill.

  • Greg Robertson08

    Last summer in Alaska I befriended some eastern european kids and found out that back home they were shown all of the awesome pictures of Alaska…Denali, Grizzly Bears, Talkeetna, The Chugach. When they arrived they were packed into tiny airplanes and flown to the fish canneries in the remote,foul parts of the state to work 16 hour shifts. Poor bastards. Had I not met them in Anchorage a week before they left they would have been as dejected as possible. I remember they wanted real Jack Daniels and to drive my truck. I have open invitations in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine now. Good kids. Hard workers. Always upbeat. I miss em.

  • http://twitter.com/MarkalFunk Markal Funk

    “It is just work, work faster, work.” Welcome to America.

  • Adrian_tentea

    these summer exchange student programs were initiated a while ago if i remember right it was ’96 or so. i came into US with the same visa and got teh same treatment. the thing is that th US based companies are not interacting directly with the students, they are using a designated agency/person who takes care of the “advertising”. so their offer is presented to these poor students in a pure hollywood style, where everything is overinflated- from the salaries to the housing (you never get any info beforehand about the type of housing you’ll get and especially the price) and types of jobs, and the overall experience . therefore their rage should be directed toward these so-called recruiters not the actual company, in the first place. secondly, if they’re not happy with what they’re doing, there’s always something else, like a second job, maybe or a different company. of course it is a bit of pain to go through all that jazz with the paperwork , but it can be done. i did it 10 years ago. you just gotta have the right attitude.
    regarding the lack of cultural exchange i would say the chinese guy has no clue whatsoever about his summer program. there is no way these students would have been hired if the basic requirements of this kind of program were not met, which is that you gotta attend to some summer classes for the time being here. of course those are some bogus and extremely boring classes about the whole US experience, but if you really want to get involved there are always different ways to make that class a little less boring that it actually is.   
    so my advise is cut the crap and work hard. if you want cultural experince move to a bigger city, there’s nothing out there in the countryside, but underpaid hard work and poor people trying to make it another day

  • Cornelius

    This happens far more often than anyone realizes. There are many freelance workers across the US, who are business owners in their own right, who use the internet to find work and as a source of income. Elance is one of the more popular companies that many freelancers use. Recently, Jon Diller, announced Elance’s new terms and a new minimum rate of $3.00/hr, saying that:

    “a top US technology company recently approached Elance with more than 150 positions to be filled at different hourly rates: about 70 positions had a budget of $3/hour, 50 positions had a budget in the $10-$20/hour range, and another 30 or so positions had a budget of $30-40/hour. But they found that our hourly minimums could not accommodate their global staffing strategy.”

    So global tax dodging happens in many ways and in ways that you may not even realize. To make matters worse, we encourage and facilitate this. Companies like Elance, see this as a market niche to take advantage of and whether that rate of $3.00/hr can hire an educated professional any where in the world is irrelevant much less whether that professional resides in the US. Elance and the companies that support them don’t care. It all comes down to the bottom line.

  • Cornelius

    This happens far more often than anyone realizes. There are many freelance workers across the US, who are business owners in their own right, who use the internet to find work and as a source of income. Elance is one of the more popular companies that many freelancers use. Recently, Jon Diller, announced Elance’s new terms and a new minimum rate of $3.00/hr, saying that:

    “a top US technology company recently approached Elance with more than 150 positions to be filled at different hourly rates: about 70 positions had a budget of $3/hour, 50 positions had a budget in the $10-$20/hour range, and another 30 or so positions had a budget of $30-40/hour. But they found that our hourly minimums could not accommodate their global staffing strategy.”

    So global tax dodging happens in many ways and in ways that you may not even realize. To make matters worse, we encourage and facilitate this. Companies like Elance, see this as a market niche to take advantage of and whether that rate of $3.00/hr can hire an educated professional any where in the world is irrelevant much less whether that professional resides in the US. Elance and the companies that support them don’t care. It all comes down to the bottom line.

  • emperorreagan

    The rage is directed in the right place.

    It’s a very common tactic for American companies to outsource some of their more despicable business practices.  From using sweatshops through contracts with third party factory owners, to selling debts written off many years ago to third parties to reage and attempt to collect, American corporations do it all of the time.  

    They are aware of all of the fraudulent and abusive business practices in which these third parties engage.  Sometimes there’s enough public outcry on one issue or another that they tell these third parties to clean up their acts for a while and you discover the apparent distance between the company and its “third party” isn’t as great as they try to imply.  Usually, though, the corporations skirt by without being called on the tactics employed by the third parties. 

    Any corporation that employs (or contracts with) agents to advertise summer exchange programs is well aware of what’s being advertised.  It’s a great arrangement for them – a third party advertises something they have no obligation or intention of fulfilling and they get labor at sub-standard wages.

  • Adrian_tentea

    allegedly they know but until proven guilty they don’t.  of course teh corporations are the ones that get all the fruits out of this kind of agreement but theese students have no idea about it and have no proof. unless there’s somehow a way to connect the dots, and it always isn’t in these cases, I still stand by my initial idea ans strongly suggest that the students have no beef with the corporations. plus that it is very strange to me that a bunch of foreign students have the capabilities to organize themselves to such a level in order to protest in such  a “civilized” way and make it to the national news.
    I remember when I was in their shoes,  we were hundreds of people from thirty-something countries and most of them barely spoke any english and had nop clue whatsoever about what is going on in this country. most of us were stricly bound to the jobs we got, whatever that was, because of the fact that you had to recover your “investment” which usually is between $1500-$2500 depending on how far you travelled to get here. considering the same premises I would say it’s 100% imposible to get  yourself involved in a labor movement in a foreign country, knowing nothing or littkle about your rights, obligations, or any of the consequences that your actions might trigger.     

  • Haystack

    “After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said…that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.”

    Replace “fees associated with the program” with “student loans,” and there you go. 

  • emperorreagan

    Odds are pretty high that someone or multiple people signed up for the program, knowing what it was, with the intention of organizing the protest.  Awareness has, of course, increased among people as more students come home with experiences that don’t match what was advertised.  That’s the nature of organizing protests or labor or anything else, though.  Such things seldom originate spontaneously (which is why American corporations like Wal-Mart spend so much effort trying to shut organizers out).

    As far as proving anything in court:  It’s not something you can really connect at a legal level – aside from managing public perceptions, one of the biggest reasons these arrangements exist to game the legal system.  A corporation would have to be particularly sloppy to get caught, or someone would have to intentionally leak internal documentation.  I see no reason why successful legal manipulations should blunt the anger against a corporation that benefits from fraudulent practices.

  • emperorreagan

    Odds are pretty high that someone or multiple people signed up for the program, knowing what it was, with the intention of organizing the protest.  Awareness has, of course, increased among people as more students come home with experiences that don’t match what was advertised.  That’s the nature of organizing protests or labor or anything else, though.  Such things seldom originate spontaneously (which is why American corporations like Wal-Mart spend so much effort trying to shut organizers out).

    As far as proving anything in court:  It’s not something you can really connect at a legal level – aside from managing public perceptions, one of the biggest reasons these arrangements exist to game the legal system.  A corporation would have to be particularly sloppy to get caught, or someone would have to intentionally leak internal documentation.  I see no reason why successful legal manipulations should blunt the anger against a corporation that benefits from fraudulent practices.

  • emperorreagan

    Odds are pretty high that someone or multiple people signed up for the program, knowing what it was, with the intention of organizing the protest.  Awareness has, of course, increased among people as more students come home with experiences that don’t match what was advertised.  That’s the nature of organizing protests or labor or anything else, though.  Such things seldom originate spontaneously (which is why American corporations like Wal-Mart spend so much effort trying to shut organizers out).As far as proving anything in court:  It’s not something you can really connect at a legal level – aside from managing public perceptions, one of the biggest reasons these arrangements exist to game the legal system.  A corporation would have to be particularly sloppy to get caught, or someone would have to intentionally leak internal documentation.  I see no reason why successful legal manipulations should blunt the anger against a corporation that benefits from fraudulent practices.

  • Adrian_tentea

    point taken

  • Anonymous

    What I want to know — where do these kids get the idea that the U.S. is any different from any other feudalistic society? Hollywood?