Hershey Kiss Off

I’m a big believer that, into every life, a couple of really crappy jobs should fall. Jobs that require standing on your feet and/or working with snarling customers and/or performing tasks that are menial, nasty, and smelly and/or handling grease and/or working under the broiling sun and/or folding and refolding the same stack of tee-shirts and/or surviving on tips. Preferably, you have these jobs when you’re in high school or college, and not when you’re on some downward career trajectory and are so desperate that you’ll take any minimum wage rotten job that presents itself.

That said, it was disturbing to read about the foreign students who last week spoke out about what they characterized as exploitative working conditions at a Hershey, Pennsylvania packing plant that Hershey subcontracts with to handle their candy. (Source: Huffington Post ).

The students had come to the U.S. on J-1 visas for the summer to experience America and improve their English. Instead, they claim they ended up working stressful full-time jobs for a sub-contractor at the plant in exchange for meager pay. Several of the students said they each paid between $3,000 and $6,000 to come to the U.S., and that after their housing costs were deducted they were taking home between $40 and $140 per week…

An investigation by the Associated Press last year found that the J-1 program had little oversight and that disappointed students often wound up in low-paying jobs under harsh conditions. Some even worked in strip clubs or took home $1 per hour.

(Yes, but did their English improve?)

It almost goes without saying that this Hershey episode spawned a cascade of Sergeant Schultz ‘I know nothing’ denials.

Hershey, of course, did not directly employ the packagers.

“Beyond that, I can say that the Hershey Company expects all of its vendors to treat its employees fairly and equitably,” [Hershey’s spokesman Kirk] Saville said.

Hey, what’s the fun of outsourcing if all you do is save money? If you can save a bit of face by benefitting from exploitation by not having to engage in it yourself, well win-win.

The company that runs the center where the packing takes place, Exel, doesn’t directly employ the J-1 kids, either.

“We’re not trying to pass the buck,” Exel spokeswoman Lynn Anderson said. “It’s a bit of a layered situation.”

Hey, I don’t think Exel’s trying to pass the buck, I think they’re trying to save the buck. Cheaper prices to offer Hershey, lower costs for themselves. Another win-win. Win-win-win if you factor in that the J-1 kids get to practice their English while, let’s face it, probably taking home the same amount they would if they were working in even worse conditions in, say, China. Where they wouldn’t be able to perfect their English. That’s got to be worth $3K – $6K, no?

Anyway, Anderson passed the (saved) buck to SHS Staffing Solutions – love that use of the word “solutions”; never get enough of it – which supplied to guest workers.

But wait just a darned minute.

Sergeant Schultz, errrrr, I mean Sean Connolly, the mouthpiece for SHS is yet another one in the no nothing supply chain.

“We just handle the payroll,” Connolly said.

The workers came from the Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA), which sigh and gush, is devoted to “reaching out to encourage a lifelong journey of global peace and understanding.”

Wow! Did CETUSA ever run for Miss America?

CETUSA is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Americans and those from other cultures to gain a better understanding of one another.

Well, I suppose that exploiting young students by employing them in dead-end, crap-pay, way down the supply chain (food chain?) jobs is a pretty darned good way to help “those from other cultures to gain a better understanding” of the realities of the contemporary American economy when we’d still rather save a nickel on a bag of Hershey’s Kisses than suck it up and pay the nickel so that the bagger could make something closer to a living wage. But the consumer saves, and Hershey profits – let alone those middle men – so win-win-winnedy-win-win.

Those who can’t find a way to win in this situation, well, I guess they’re just big old double-l losers who’d better start thinking about ways to pull themselves up by their flip-flop straps.  Forget about workers of the world unite. It’s workers of the world, stop sucking your thumbs and whining for the nanny state to hand you a blankie.

So whether you’re a shiftless American worker who can’t manage to make ends meet on minimum wage (wimp!) or a cossetted student from Asia or Eastern Europe who wants to learn our ways: SUCK IT UP.

Of course, CETUSA doesn’t quite come out and say all this.

For prospective employers,

No matter if you own a little candy shop in Texas or run a huge processing plant in Alaska, international students are eager to gain work experience and support you and your business.

In this era of global markets, U.S. businesses look to increase competitive advantage through workforce diversity and international reach. International trainees or interns contribute their diverse outlook, unique experiences, high motivation and new ideas. International interns are also eager to learn American business practices while sharing from their own expertise. This mutually beneficial relationship is the foundation on which the J-1 Trainee and Internship Program was founded.

Since the meltdown in Hershey has cast a new light on that foundational “mutually beneficial relationship”  CETUSA has been doing a bit of Schultzing of their own.

"Obviously, we want every student to experience a meaningful cultural exchange during their visit," CETUSA CEO Rick Anaya said. "If that is not the case, we will attempt to work with the students to see what can be done in the limited time they have left in their visits." (Source: Huffington Post.)

Most of the students come from pretty hardscrabble countries – places like China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, and Romania, where hard work and crappy conditions are not exactly unknown. But paying for the privilege of making low-ball wages under poor working conditions seems more than a tad exploitative. Factor in that, for a bit more, these jobs could have gone to locals who – however crummy the jobs are – might have been thankful for them in this economy…

Sounds like a lose-lose to me.

But there’s been a lot of that going around these last couple of decades, hasn’t there?

When you factor out the fraction of the American workforce who have actually benefitted from globalization, much beyond being able to watch football on a flat screen TV and decorate their yards with giant inflatable Santa Clauses, it sure looks like more of a kiss-off than a kiss.

Hey, globalization is inevitable. In the aggregate, it raises the living standards for millions world-wide, which is mostly a good thing. It lets “us” have more stuff.

Still, it might help if we paid a tad bit more attention to the dislocating effects it has had on a good swath of our population.

You’d think by now that there’d be a bit more serious talk about what exactly it is that Americans who aren’t bio-engineers or traders are going to do for work.

Can’t all bag Hershey’s Kisses – especially when those jobs are going to a bunch of students who just want to better their English.