Hoffa Denounces Hershey for Exporting American Jobs to Mexico

[Omaha Steve]

http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/02-20-2009/0004976129&EDATE=

Pennsylvania Peppermint Patty Plant Closes as Production Moves Across Border; 300 Workers in Reading, PA are Latest Victims of NAFTA Race to the Bottom

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa denounced the Hershey Food Corporation's (NYSE: HSY) closing of its plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 300 workers out in the cold. Hershey's plan to move the jobs to a Monterey, Mexico plant shows how unfair trade deals like NAFTA continue to harm American workers.

The plant's closing continues a disturbing trend for a city that has already lost more than one-fourth of its good-paying manufacturing jobs since January 2001. Of the workers losing their jobs, 50 are Teamsters.

"That plant stood for decades in Reading, providing countless families with good wages and job security," Hoffa said. "Members of this community helped build that company and this is how they are repaid. Hershey's actions are unconscionable in this economic climate."

The Hershey plant in Reading made York Peppermint Patties and 5th Avenue bars. To date, the company has shut down six plants with this most recent closing a stage in its plan to cut 1,500 U.S. jobs.

"Pennsylvania lost nearly 60,000 jobs in the last quarter of 2008 and the estimate for the month was well over 30,000 jobs lost," Hoffa said. "When are we going to tell companies like Hershey that enough is enough?"

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents more than 1.4 million hard-working men and women in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.


SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters

[Trajan]

1. Not only did that plant stand for decades employing workers ...

The workers helped make Hershey's RICH ... They helped them AMASS WEALTH .....

You can be damned sure about this:

1) Hershey's management could NOT have amassed wealth without those workers then ...

2) Many will stop buying Hershey's products because of this ...

Fuck them .... There are other options ....

[TreasonousBastard]

2. They could move that plant to Mexico without NAFTA, and...

where's the dicussion of how many candy plants have moved to Mexico or Canada because then they can get Cuban sugar for a third the price of what they pay here?

[Joesunionreview]

3. Start it and write about it, we...

...need more people to explain the problems we face here in the US

[Joesunionreview]

4. I elaborated on this story at Joe's

found out that the minimum wage of the workers in Monterrey is only $3.60 a day, there is no American worker, union or not, that can compete with $3.60 a day.

http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2009/02/americas-workers-lose-fight-to-compete.html">America's workers lose fight to compete with Mexico wage of $5 a day, Hershey's plant looses 300 jobs in Peppermint Patty factory move

I urge all of my readers to spread the word, do as the writer over at Truth Hurt's is doing, a total boycott of the Hershey items listed:

* Peppermint Patty
* Zagnut
* Jolly Rancher
* 5th. Avenue

You can't make them here, we don't want em