In Solidarity with workers at Hershey Chocolate Company

The NTUI stands in solidarity with your struggle for the respect of workers rights and against Hershey Chocolate Company (HCC). HCC has been maliciously exploiting students on short-term cultural exchange (J-1 visas) as workers at its Palmyra, Pennsylvania, packing plant. The J-1 visa is a US Government summer visa programme that allows visa holders to work for two months and then travel in the US. The programme is advertised as an opportunity for university students from other countries to experience a “real cultural exchange” in the US.

The US Government has outsourced its oversight role to programme sponsors and employers who hire the participants. This has allowed for the emergence of a complex contracting system, which both the Government and HCC are now using to deny responsibility for the complaints. Beside the complaint against HCC, complaints about abuses of hundreds of students in more than a dozen states in the US have been reported. The NTUI joins the call of trade unions across the world on the US Government to take immediate action to respond to this emerging situation.

It is unacceptable that overseas students are turned into vulnerable migrant workers in the US, including at HCC, so that companies can exploit them, cashing in on the vulnerability of their situation and loopholes in the US legal framework for the protection of migrant worker’s rights. The NTUI denounces HCC’s conscious and malicious strategy to increase its profits by employing cheap and vulnerable workers with no legal protection, instead of providing the much-needed jobs to the US working population. The NTUI also condemns the complete lack of responsibility of the US Government in failing to put in place mechanisms to protect short-term visitors from exploitation, thereby creating a pool of cheap and vulnerable workforce.

The NUTI salutes the 300 workers, organised by the National Guest Workers Alliance, that staged a sit-in protest at HCC’s Palmyra packing plant in Pennsylvania on 17 August 2011, and held a rally in front of the Hershey Story Museum the next day, to protest the exploitation of student guest workers and demand living wage jobs for local workers. We recognize the challenges of organizing workers of diverse origins under such short term arrangements and celebrate the event of the first industrial action by short-term visa holders. We congratulate the strength and resolve of the students in deciding to organize them selves to fight back against these abuses, despite HCC’s management and the contractor’s intent to intimidate the students. We condemn both HCC’s management and the contractor’s intimidation practices, including captive audience meetings at the plant, threats of deportation in the face of the workers organizing efforts.

The NTUI stands in solidarity with workers at HCC, members of the National Guest Workers Alliance and ALF-CIO in your struggle and support your demands of a full refund of the cost of enrolling and other expenses for each of the students.