By jwjnational, on February 2nd, 2012

On the eve of August 5, 2011, during the pinnacle banquet of the National Jobs with Justice conference, student guestworkers who had traveled from all over the world only to work in a plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania made a pitch for solidarity.  Like the Verizon workers who were about to go on strike the very next day, these workers too were planning to take courageous action.

They certainly had high expectations.  And why shouldn’t they have?  Just before they got on stage, workers with the National Guestworkers Alliance from a previous campaign against Signal had just been there claiming victory against the company and a reunion with their families.  So, the 30 that had come stood up and told a story about how they each paid $3,000-$6,000 to come to the U.S. this summer for what they thought would be a cultural exchange program through the State Department’s J-1 visa. Instead, they found themselves packing chocolates at the Hershey’s plant in deeply exploitative conditions. After automatic weekly deductions for rent in company housing and other expenses, they net between $40 and $140 per week for 40 hours of work.

One week later, Jobs with Justice took action in solidarity with hundreds of the student guestworkers from around the world who, together with unemployed American workers and labor leaders, halted production during a factory sit-in at the Hershey Chocolate Company’s packing plant in Pennsylvania. Their demands: end Hershey’s exploitation of student guestworkers, and give living wage jobs to Pennsylvania’s workers.  In addition to supporting national labor leaders in going to Pennsylvania directly, JwJ activists signed on line petitions, organized actions on Hershey’s boutique stores in Chicago and New York, and participated in intense meetings with the US State Department in solidarity.

The students faced immediate retaliation for their organizing. Students from all three shifts were summoned to “captive audience” meetings in the plant and threatened with deportation. Back home, the recruiters in their countries sent threatening emails to the student-workers, called their parents, and even flew into the U.S. from China to undercut the organizing.  Hershey’s security directed local police to arrest labor leaders who were conducting civil disobedience in support of the students. AFL-CIO Pennsylvania State President Rick Bloomingdale, SEIU President Healthcare Pennsylvania Neal Bisno, and SEIU Local 668 President Kathy Jellison were arrested during a sit-in at the factory gates, and remained in police custody for several hours.

Afterwards, four federal agencies, including the US Department of Labor and the US State Department, launched investigations into the exploitation of J-1 student workers at the Hershey’s plant, and nearly 70,000 Americans signed a petition in support of the students’ demands.  While students and workers in Pennsylvania and around the country continued to take action, Hershey’s launched a PR campaign to attempt to discredit the students, and hired Blank Rome Government Relations to lobby Congress on “government affairs issues related to labor practices.”  When pressured, they tried to shift the blame to the Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA), the company they worked with the recruit the students.  CETUSA was one of the biggest actors in the J-1 program, bringing thousands of students each year.

Monday, the State Department announced that CETUSA was now banned from the J-1 visa program—sending a clear message to all companies participating in the program, “A cultural program for foreign students will not be exploited to recruit cheap labor!”  Additionally, the entire J-1 program, which has hosted over one million students, is now under review.

According to an article by Julia Preston in today’s New York Times,

“The students’ demonstrations set off an investigation of Cetusa by the State Department and accelerated a review of the entire summer program, ordered by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2010. Critics on many sides said the program had become a vast source of temporary foreign workers at a time of high joblessness for Americans and had lost some of its purpose as a source of positive cultural exposure to the United States for foreign university students.”

Some of the changes will include increased protections of the health and safety of the students and a potential ban on factory and industrial jobs.

Said Harika Duygu Ozer, one of the student guestworkers involved in the Hershey fight from Instanbul, Turkey in the same New York Times article, “I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like Cetusa, that we will not be your captive workers”.

The Hershey’s story goes to the heart of the current debate over the sources of America’s jobs crisis. Decades of downsizing, outsourcing, and subcontracting by corporations like Hershey’s has robbed local workers of living wage jobs, while locking immigrant workers—and even cultural exchange students on J-1 visas—into situations of captive labor.

It also speaks to the necessity of the POWER Act (Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation).  Students faced intense retaliation from the company—getting evicted from corporate housing, and facing political reprisals at home. The POWER Act would protect workers like these students from employer retaliation when trying to organize for dignity and respect on the job by providing U-Visa protections for guestworkers and immigrant workers who are at risk of deportation—even if simply making a complaint.

Jobs with Justice, the National Guestworkers Alliance and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network are working with others to launch an organizing effort around the promise of the POWER Act.  Stay tuned to www.jwj.org.