Posted on 02/21/2009 5:17:52 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
A flag is flying at half-staff outside The Hershey Co. plant in Reading where production of York Peppermint Patties is ending.
After 23 years in Reading, the chocolate maker is closing the plant Friday and moving production to a new factory it has built in Monterey, Mexico.
It will mean the loss of 300 jobs in the southeastern Pennsylvania city. The plant also makes 5th Avenue and Zagnut candy bars and Jolly Rancher hard candies.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
When companies do this it is because of underlying reasons that they have found no other solution to. Union, taxes and needless regulation. Sadly workers show no desire to ununionize(is that a word?) and governments see it as their lot in life to make running a business as unprofitable and as hard as is humanly possible.
I suspect Peppermint Patty has morphed into Rosie Odonut.
Those American workers just won’t work for $1.50 an hour, and times are tight. The CEO still gets his $25 million over 5 years, however.
Thanks for the link. Argentina and China, somehow that figure!
"Down here, in this culture, we're taught to do what the boss tells you to do," says another teacher, who didn't want to give his name.
What do they call that, the Goebbels excuse? Just following orders.
I’ll take regulation and safe food over rogue companies and salmonella, thank you.
Mexico already is a failed state for the most part. I cannot believe executives are that dumb. Oh, they probably are betting that if some narco warlord takes over the factory, Hershey will get a bailout from the U.S. taxpayer.You know they have the Audacity to Hope that they would be bailed out with no small amount of Change.
Which is exactly what happened to our tomatoes in Florida last year!....The tomato industry lost millions!!!! because our government refused to name the real source of contamination....Mexico!
Lean years are for the little people.
I think the question should be why we are focused on one and not the other. It’s funny how ostensible conservatives focus like laser beams on labor costs, but ignore nearly every other (material, regulatory, tax, etc.).
Exactly! The know that if they mention a USA source, some how, some way, people will still buy the product, because mose people don't fully read labels.
The sad thing is that so many things are actually coming from foreign countries and only being distributed by a company in the the USA. I wonder just how empty the shelves in the grocery stores would be, if products grown or produced elsewhere were removed from the shelves.
I once spent several months trying to find IT employment in the Portland Oregon area.
This area is full of American IT people looking for jobs, but there are presently few out there. I am not buying there are not enough Americans for the IT work out there, with chip plants, Boeing and HP laying off right and left.
It was always about pay, about the kings of Wall street getting a little bigger bonus.
Wall street bonuses, Bailed out by immigration under Bush, and now with paper money under Obama.
Why doesn't a tablespoon of sugar taste like antifreeze then?
I don’t know. I’ve never tasted antifreeze. Have you? I hear it’s sweet, like corn syrup, maybe. LOL
We could argue about this issue for a few more years and you would still represent my argument.
The labor is a very small cost of the final product as these lines are highly automated. The real money is in the raw material. Buyers in Mexico or Canada buy sugar on the world market and get the best price. Buyers in the United States are prohibited from using the world market as a source. I'm not saying labor costs were not a factor, but the real savings will be in raw materials.
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