Here’s an unfortunate story about foreign students who were recruited to work at a Hershey’s Chocolate packing plant. These kids were sold a bill of goods that they would come to America to work and then have some free time to travel around the country and get to know the American people.
Julia Preston in an article entitled “Companies Point Fingers as Students Protest Conditions at Chocolate Plant” reveals: “About 400 students, mainly from universities in China, Turkey and Eastern Europe, came to work at the packing plant under a summer cultural exchange program offered by the State Department. With visas called J-1, the students work for several months and then may travel around the country.
The students, including many from medical and engineering graduate schools, said they were expecting a relaxing summer job and opportunities to befriend Americans. They were encouraged, they said, by the Web site of the council, which shows laughing students on a highway before a panoramic mountain landscape, promising a chance to “live your dream.”
Instead, the students were dropped into the middle of a transformed American workplace, doing fast-paced production line and lifting work in round-the-clock shifts for wages of $7.25 to $8.35 an hour, under multiple layers of contractors. The students said they rarely saw American employees in their area of the plant, where they were packing Reese’s, Kit-Kat and other candies.”
What is all the more remarkable here is that in the face of being concerned about being sent home to their native lands 150 of these students staged a protest strike and walked off of their jobs. All I can say is that this sort of thing is sad commentary on just how far some companies will go to exploit labor. But the real tragedy here is less the fact that exploitation has occurred and more about who are the victims. If this is the introduction that these students have to the American version of capitalism how can we ever hope to convince those from emerging nations that our model is the one to follow in this new century?
SJG
8/20/11
Companies Point Fingers as Students Protest Conditions at Chocolate Plant
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19students.html?pagewanted=1&sq=companies point fingers&st=cse&scp=1
