Posted on 08/18/2011 6:56:48 PM PDT by blam
Foreign Students Walk Off Hershey’s Factory Job In Protest
By Liz Goodwin
August 18, 2011
Hundreds of foreign students on a State Department cultural exchange visa program walked off their factory jobs in protest on Wednesday.
The J-1 visa program brings foreign students to the country to work for two months and learn English, and was designed in part to fill seasonal tourism jobs at resorts and seaside towns. The 400 students employed at a Pennsylvania factory that makes Hershey's candies told The New York Times that even though they make $8.35 an hour, their rent and program fees are deducted from their paychecks, leaving them with less money than they spent to get the visas and travel to the country in the first place.
Some of the students were assigned night shifts, and said they were pressured to work faster and faster on the factory lines.
Hershey's said they didn't hire the students when the Times asked:
A spokesman for Hershey's, Kirk Saville, said the chocolate company did not directly operate the Palmyra packing plant, which is managed by a company called Exel. A spokeswoman for Exel said it had found the student workers through another staffing company.
Last December, the AP revealed that federal immigration officials were investigating two human-trafficking abuse cases related to J-1 visas. Strip clubs openly solicited J-1 visa holders in job listings, and some foreign students told the AP they were forced into sexual slavery when their passports were confiscated by a ring of criminals. About 150,000 J-1 visas were given out in 2008. Businesses save about 8 percent by using a foreign worker because of Social Security and other taxes they do not have to pay.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
We have around 25 million unemployed or under employed Americans and around 25 million illegals. Why in the hell are we still bring in more foreigners to work with special visas? This is flat out stupid by a country trying to kill itself.
I live just outside of Hershey and remember the last rounds where the unin wanted to be the determiner of who works there and what they get paid.
High school kid who wants to push a broom or load boxes for $12 ab hour?
NO say the union, they get full Bennie's and the local insist they get full package.
Hershey does not run into the propblam outside of Hershey... so they leave.
The union is who procures union Job.
No signed up to the union???? NO JOB FOR YOU~!
I live just outside of Hershey and remember the last rounds where the unin wanted to be the determiner of who works there and what they get paid.
High school kid who wants to push a broom or load boxes for $12 ab hour?
NO say the union, they get full Bennie's and the local insist they get full package.
Hershey does not run into the propblam outside of Hershey... so they leave.
The union is who procures union Job.
No signed up to the union???? NO JOB FOR YOU~!
I’m glad I hate chocolate.
I wish I hated chocolate!
...I know ,I live about 8 miles from the Mars plant that does..*smiles*
And what’s the unemployment rate of our own student-age population?
Hershey's and the related companies are actually laying off their own employees in order to utilize this cheaper labor. They've laid off over 500 employees over the past few years and expect t layoff that many or more over the next year or so.
*Get a job so you can learn how to show up, stay busy and please your boss
* If the job doesn't pay enough you learn what it takes to get promoted or find another job that pays more
* If finding another job that pays more is hard because of skills, you find a way to acquire the skills to land a better job
...and so it goes. But, for them who've never had a job or an interest in finding one the process never develops.
Unions are meddling in this situation. What a surprise!
So are you trying to say that employers who don't have to pay the tab for a J-1's social security, thereby reducing their costs by 8% or so, do not have an incentive to hire J-1's over locals?
I would disagree strongly because the employer's costs are thus reduced and he does NOT have to share that increase in wealth with the employee.
Some of the purists have accused me of socialist thinking for application of the realities of labor economics to real life.
They argue that open borders are a good thing because they reduce costs across the board which benefit everyone. Juan McCain is one of them who holds out the prospect of unaffordable lettuce in the grocery stores if we have to pay lettuce pickers $50 per hour.
That's an idiotic argument on at least three counts:
Years ago, my sister worked in Grand Canyon National Park in the summer. By the time that food and dorm fees were deducted, she ended up with a little less than minimum wage. She still considered it a great experience because the hours were reasonable as were the meals and dorm fees. Somehow, I don't thank that is the case here. Kids from the Ukraine do not come to America infused with the same bloated sense of entitlement as does your average Section 8 housing occupant. But I could be wrong . . .
My son has managed some of these kids who come over, mostly from the former Soviet Union. It’s a bit of a scam they run on them... they often put them in apartments in very run down and dangerous areas, or in very cramped seaside accomodations... the kids have no idea where they are staying, but quickly learn. It’s all done under the guise of a cultural exchange... but in the end the employers get extremely cheap summer help. These are not spoiled youngsters... they are used to having to scrape by, so if they had an issue with Hersey’s, I have a feeling it was because they were promised one thing, and as usual something else was delivered. Many of them are financing part of this trip/experience...
Why are we importing slavs? Because American kids don’t want to do the normal summer jobs anymore...particularly in the mid-Atlantic and eastern seabord. It’s much easier for these employers to import someone who they know will have to stay for the entire two months.
Why do you think girls take jobs as au pairs? It’s marketed to them as a cultural exchange. Many do this type of work before going to University. And many have a great time, but some unfortunately are taken advantage of.
8:}
I am saying that the cost of whatever employment taxes an employer writes the check for is borne by the employee, not the employer.
On the more general point of hiring J-1s - I really don’t give a damn; I’m a free-marketer and get sick and tired of the lazy dolts who want to lock everything up so that God forbid someone who wasn’t graced by being born in the US wants to come to one of the few places where an individual can make a decent life for himself and his kin.
Obviously that isn’t these little J-1 twits, but nonetheless, the general point still stands: if you decide you’re going to cut these off because they’re supposedly taking jobs away from Americans (that is one of the oldest, and stupidest, canards in the book), then you’re just a socialist prostitute and the only thing left to discuss is your price.
If an imported worker is truly better that their American counterpart, they should be willing to pay a premium, not less.
This is how the system works in Japan-- you must pay the imported worker a slight premium over the average wage of a local (Japanese or permanent resident) worker. When I worked there, it only took slightly over one month to process my visa for precisely that reason: the government saw the company was willing to pay me a premium wage over my Japanese counterparts so as not likely bringing me in to save on what they normally paid.
The result was fewer, but much happier, foreign workers.
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