Most other candy manufacturers have already moved these kinds of jobs out of this country. Why?
Common labor in these other countries can range from $2.50 PER WEEK to upwards of $12 PER WEEK.
We in the US simply cannot compete with this kind of cost structure.
And if the foreign country grows it's labor costs too much, we simply move to another "less advantaged" country.
Simple? Yes. Economically sound? Yes. Motivated by profit? Not entirely, but for the sake of arguement, yes. Did the costs on union jobs cause this shift? Not entirely, but I'll bet there are those on this site that would argue the point.
I used to be an AFL-CIO member and my level 2 pay rate topped out at about $12.50. There was only one union rate about a dollar higher than mine with only 3 or 4 people earning that.
It wasn’t the unions that killed that shop, it was simple greed. Collins and Aikman bought the company and immediately started closing the other shops. Ours was the headquarters and was still fairly profitable.
When they finally did close the doors they didn’t do it immediately they started cutting hours back to part time and hiring illegals through a temp service at $6 an hour. When they had driven all the full time employees away they sold the contracts back to GM and Chrysler, sold the equipment and dumped the empty building.
Incidentally, Collins and Aikman is the company David Stockman was involved with before being indicted for defrauding investors.
You need to refresh your data. The labor rate in China is $0.85 per hour and India is $1.25 per hour.
Until the introduction of the Income Tax most of the federal revenue was collected via tariffs on imported goods and materials. We have since virtually eliminated tariffs as a source of federal revenue and we are now reaping the rewards.
I don't think a service economy can last too long without a manufacturing base. And since 90% of the crap we are importing is throw away rather than serviceable goods, our service economy may be headed for a collapse.
To think that Hershey's is moving out of the United States is worrisome. Certainly the lay off of 260 employees into a market with a very low unemployment is not going to have any immediate effect, but the long term effect of this kind of outsourcing is not going to be a pretty sight.
It is time we got out of the global market and started becoming a sovereign nation once again. Hershey's is no longer an American Company and they have no loyalty to America.
Quite frankly $12.50 to $22,50 per hour is not all that much and quite frankly Hershey Chocolate is not all that expensive and it tends to be cheaper than the imported chocolates anyway. I see no reason for this move other than than the fact that the company has no loyalty to the United States and is more than happy to pay slave wages in foreign countries in order to boost its profits. That is something that they are clearly entitled to do, however if we do not stop this hemorrhaging of jobs out of the country, our country could be in for trouble ahead.
I think we, as a nation, should do all we can to level the playing field with foreign countries. Unless those countries have relatively equal labor conditions, wages, workers compensation laws and mandatory regulations to those which our manufacturers in America are subject to, then the US Government should impose tariffs on all their goods entering into this country. It is a small price to pay to ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. This is not protectionism, it is preservationism.
/rant
There are probably savings in the labor but candy production is highly automated. Regardless labor is not the reason candy makers are moving to Canada, Mexico, etc.
The real issue is sugar cost. The US sugar price is about 20 percent higher than the “world” market due to protectionist agricultural programs. The sugar cost is a very big deal in this industry.