Hershey Under Fire Over Student Guestworker Program that Left 400 Students with Little Money after Deductions for Overpriced Housing

Four hundred foreign students call Hershey's U.S. guestworker program a fraud, saying company abused J-1 visa program by putting them to live in overpriced housing that left them with chump change after packing chocolate all day.

Before you unwrap another Hershey's Kiss, you should ponder who wrapped it in the nice and shiny silver wrapper on the assembly line, just for you to eat. According to Courthouse News, 400 foreign students complained to the State Department that the Hershey chocolate company abused a foreign-exchange program to put them to work packing chocolate and put them in overpriced company housing that left them with  only $40 to $140 for a week's work.

The National Guestworker Alliance claims Hershey abused the J-1 student guestworker program, violated labor laws, intimidated, coerced and threatened them with deportation. In an Aug. 17 letter to the State Department's Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, 12 named students said they protested the abuses on behalf of more than 400 similarly situated "Hershey guestworkers."

The students say they were recruited in their homelands around the world, including in China, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Mongolia, Romania, Ghana, and Thailand, and that they paid $3,000 to $6,000 apiece to participate in what they were told would be a cultural exchange program, "as well as to work for three months."

Click the pdf icon to read the letter: 



Read more:  http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/19/39118.htm