MSNBC: Hershey's Reading PA Mint Patty factory closing. 300 jobs gone, not due to bankruptcy,

[Skidmore]

but to Mexico. Poof! Just like that! Hershey is not a good corporate citizen. Time to start calling these companies out.

[midnight]

1. Good idea. Not going to buy hershey because they are not

good corporate citizens.

[Barack_America]

2. A small chocolatier opened up near me.

So, yeah, that's who's getting my (sizable :blush:) chocolate business now.

[atreides1]

3. Just Great

What a smart move on Hershey's part. Move to a country that is literally in the beginnings of a civil war between the drug cartels and the government.

With the drug cartels possessing better arms and intel then the government.

Who here thinks that this will provide the cartels with another way to export their products into the US?

[sandyj999]

9. Excellent Point! n/t

[rurallib]

4. Do they make a name brand mint patty so I can avoid them?

like Pearson's or York?

[rurallib]

6. I see York on their website. Is that all?

[jmowreader]

11. Hershey makes York Peppermint Patties.

[rvablue]

13. Too bad for me and too bad for them, as

York Peppermint Patties are one of my favorites.

I won't be eating them anymore both out of fear and out of shame.

The production standards in Mexico scare me and I won't be giving money to Corps who ship jobs overseas.

No more for me!

[HillbillyBob]

5. I am looking for verification, then I will look for a contact and post

here.
I will write to them and tell them as I have told other companies.
You are traitors to the US by taking jobs overseas, just as Levis and Wrangers(VF corp) and as I told them I Will Never buy another of your products. You think that you will make profits if we all stop buying?
I have not found that they are outsourcing..though I have not looked extensively..Im in the middle of getting dinner started.

[hootinholler]

7. Milton is rolling in his grave...

This was announce last year sometime? Or is this another plant being offshored? Milton Hershey built his plant in a location and ran it in a way that an entire community could be in place, the extended Hershey Family. Someone with a management degree has gotten power inside the company and doesn't care about why the company exists in the first place.

-Hoot

[old mark]

10. They closed the other reading plant a little over a year ago.

They gave little notice - like 2 months - and there were several entire families working there, in some cases 3 generations of the same family lost their jobs forever.
Hershey made 5th Avenue bars and other products there, now they are all made in Mexico, contain less cocoa and cost more.

I haven't bought ANY Hershey products for 2 years and looks like I never will again.

mark

[TlalocW]

14. I've mentioned on other threads

that recently while cleaning out a closet, I found a book I had bought from when I was in second grade that was about Milton Hershey. I decided to re-read it for kicks - too 15 minutes - and while I'm sure there are more facets to the man than what was in the book, his generosity and his business bravado were astounding in that he had one of the few companies that grew in the Great Depression, and then when you add on that's when he was also doing a lot of work on Hershey, Pennsylvania, it's doubly impressive. Towards the end of his life, he said he felt proud of what he had achieved in life - not that because it had enriched him so much (which it had), but that he had built a community that would be able to take care of itself and would always have the smell of chocolate wafting over it from the factories.

Alas, 63 years later, no more.

TlalocW

[azmouse]

15. If you're interested in reading more about Milton Hershey

this is a good book - 'Hershey' by Michael D'Antonio

He really wanted to build a utopian community and help people but the book talks about his flaws too.

[TlalocW]

20. I looked at his Wikipedia entry

And it seems the book and it match when it comes to his putting employees well-being first.

What is it about candy-makers like him and Willy Wonka that just want to make people happy? :)

TlalocW

[azmouse]

24. I think it's all the sugar.

:9 Sweet.

[hootinholler]

17. I know it's so sad.

At least the school remains.

-Hoot

[creeksneakers2]

43. Milton would have never done something like this

During the depression Milton kept his entire workforce employed building a four star hotel.

[Captain Hilts]

8. 2nd plant they've done this. Hershey is dead to me now. nt

[crimsonblue]

12. This does not make much business sense.

In the face of a recession, adding huge capital costs are counter-productive. In the current price-deflation that is starting to make its rounds, production of foodstuffs will increase in its margin profit. There is very little to be gained by moving the factory to another country, and the benefits from it won't be seen for a decade. I guess this goes to show that even well-run companies employ stupid executives.

[Xithras]

16. They've been doing this a lot lately.

I quit buying Hershey when they killed the Oakdale California plant and set those jobs to Mexico. I now use Ghirardelli chocolate for baking and cooking, and often for munching. It's higher quality stuff than Hershey puts out anyway...the quality of Hershey chocolate has been dropping for years.

[notadmblnd]

21. Ghirardelli cocolate brownies are the best.

[ejpoeta]

18. well, hershey, you just lost a customer!!

[HillbillyBob]

19. http://www.hersheys.com /contactus/contact-us-date.asp

that is a contact form it asks for a birthdate in order to get to the submission form.
I have not sent yet..I want to cool off some. I love York Peppermint patties!
We need to start talking back to these corpses. If they can count on the sure loss of customers perhaps they will reconsider.
if not fuck them. This is my letter to hersheys.
I hear today that the York brand peppermint patties will soon be made in Mexico, I missed that you had closed and moved other factories. I assume you know the history and why Milton Hershey established the factory there and made an attempt at a utopia.
Frankly who ever made this poor decision is also a traitor, flat and unadorned that is my opinion.
I say the same thing to every other company that has outsourced American jobs for greed.
My family went bankrupt and we were homeless in 2002 and 03 for the same reason.
I was a life long Hersheys customer as well as Levi Strauss Jeans. When Levis moved from Greensboro NC a few years ago after a century of dedication from the employees that made the company world famous and great. Now you are just another greedy corpse.

[sufrommich]

22. I won't be eating anymore Hersheys chocolates. nt

[Vinca]

23. There needs to be a huge, giant tariff on Hershey products

coming back into the country. They should be subsidizing the American citizens they're dumping.

[Romulox]

29. Uh, NAFTA.

[Vinca]

37. I know . . . and it's not right. nt

[Bluerthanblue]

25. what a dissapointment. I'd think the founder

would not approve if he were still alive.


:( thank goodness for Necco wafers.

[grace0418]

26. If I didn't already think their chocolate sucked I would stop buying it. Although they

bought Scharffen Berger and I do sometimes buy that. So I guess I won't buy that anymore.

[Romulox]

27. Hershey's makes an extremely low quality product to begin with. It will be easy to live without it.

[mopinko]

28. it's the price of sugar.

it is artificially high in the us. we have lost quite a few candy companies in chicago because of it. lot of them went to canada, but yeah, mexico, too. they grow a lot of sugar there.

[Hippo_Tron]

30. Which ironically is due to protectionism

Agriculture gets an exemption from free trade because big agribusiness pays off our congress. Sugar is outrageously expensive because sugar farmers want to keep their jobs and corn gets subsidized to make that high fructose cornshit substitute. Lower the tariffs on sugar then we can just import it from Latin America and make the candy here.

[mopinko]

32. yuppers

maybe mayor daley will make an issue of that.

[Xithras]

38. So instead of laying off factory workers, we're laying off farmworkers.

Either way, someone loses a job.

[Hippo_Tron]

39. Yes, but we don't have to eat high fructose cornshit anymore

And farm workers make up a very very small portion of workers in the US. Cargill and Monsanto just don't want to lose their corporate welfare.

[Qutzupalotl]

31. FWIW, I think Dove chocolate tastes better anyway.

And they're owned by Mars, which is still in Hackettstown, NJ.

Just happened to have a bag lying around...

[philk17088]

33. Not like it used to be

Milton Hershey was a class act. My father still tells the stories of how M.H. hired carpenters in the depression to help expand the school and paid wages way above what he had to. He also continued to buy milk from the local farmers and kept producing chocolate thought the market for it was weak. He even had some net losses during the depression but the company survived. He built Hershey park for his workers and for the town. Now its a tourist ripoff. The decline of Hershey Co. started when Lenny took over as CEO from Ken Wolfe. He tried to cut wages and benefits, tried to sell the company outright and was shot down by the Trust which holds majority stake in the company for the sole benefit of the School. He did manage to close the plants and ship those jobs to mexico. In my home town I'd say 25% of the people worked for Hershey in some fashion or another.

The thing is Hershey Co has never lost money since going public. It was considered a stock to buy and hold, it paid a nice dividend and was steady. That all changed when institutional stock buyers demanded higher share price over everything.

This is a sore subject with me.

[niyad]

34. I believe they outsourced about 1500 jobs in the last two years, and shipped them to mexico

never did like hershey's anyway--cannot stand most american chocolate--it all tastes like wax. when I learned about the outsourcing, I also learned that hershey had bought two of my favourite chocolate companies-- scharffenberger and dagoba.

so, don't eat any of their products anymore either.

thank goodness I do have access to GOOD chocolate.

[keroro gunsou]

35. for the love of all that is holy...

please tell me they don't make m and m's or reese's pieces....

[huskerlaw]

36. M&Ms is Mars, but

Reese's pieces is Hershey. Sorry.

[FatDave]

41. Peanut butter M&M's.

Waaaaayyy better than Reese's Pieces. Higher quality PB, and a layer of chocolate too. What's not to like?

[donco6]

40. I really avoid imported food of any kind.

After the melamine debacle, I'm leery about buying imported food, period. So, See Ya, Hershey!

[blue neen]

42. No more Hershey's bars for this house.

I think Hershey's will eventually regret this decision.