Hershey shareholders protest cuts

Source: AP

Plan to eliminate hometown jobs draws ire at firm's annual meeting
Posted on Wed, Apr. 18, 2007

HERSHEY -- The chairman and chief executive of The Hershey Co. faced shareholders Tuesday, the first time since announcing hometown job cuts and a major overseas expansion, and insisted to a divided audience that he was doing the right thing for the company.

More than a thousand people attended the annual meeting of the nation's largest candymaker, and a few took the microphone during a question-and-answer session to vent anger over what they say is the opposite path founder Milton S. Hershey would have taken.

But Richard H. Lenny, the first Hershey Co. chief executive hired from outside the century-old company, did not apologize or back down, and even received applause after he maintained that his chief responsibility is to keep the company competitive.

"Like it or not, that's the job," Lenny said, adding, "We are making decisions that we believe are in the best of the company."



Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/116/story/71947.html

This is exactly the opposite of what Milton Hershey envisioned for his company. There once was a time when companies actually cared about their employees.

Nice to see that Hershey is catching up to the rest of the greed-driven, damned-the-employee corporations. :sarcasm:

Thomas Jefferson warned about the marraige of industry and government.

Does the United States exist merely to facilitate corporate enterprise? Or does it exist to serve the interests of its citizens?

screw anyone who works for us because they deserve to be taken out and shot if they don't work for chicken feed. That's how we'll run a profitable company.....

I think that's what he meant.

To me that's what it is.

created a company that literally became as much a symbol of this country as mom's apple pie. Now it has sold out like the rest. When our major corporations give no loyalty to their workers or to the country, they should expect no loyalty in return.

Tell them you will not support their anti-American policies. With pressure from shareholders AND customers, maybe they will stop the relocation. Be sure to discuss the American dream, fair treatment of employees and laws regarding quality and safety of product. Maybe even mention the names of a few competitors you will buy from. We have to let them know.

8643

Hershey Park was originally created as a giant rest-and-relaxation picnic area for his employees. Hershey is still a great town with a great company-town spirit (which has been badly shaken by these layoffs; I see the employees on our local news, so upset at what is happening to the Hershey family).

Thanks mucho to the current crop of Gordon Geccos who run the joint. Greedy bastards.

Also, Milton and his wife, who could not have children, founded a school for underprivileged kids, for orphans and for kids with dysfunctional family situations (long before anyone TALKED about dysfunctional families). The company is supposed to help support that school, which is the major stockholder.

I had hoped Hershey would remain one of the last beacons of hope in this Lay-Em-All-Off-And-Oursource-Their-Jobs world.

Milton, who had a ticket on the Titanic but decided not to go at the last minute (thank God), is rolling over in his GRAVE!

*sigh*

It's called Smiths Falls. I live near there. About a third of the town are being thrown out of work because of this move.

I'll never buy another Hershey's product now, knowing that some of my unemployed neighbors may now lose their homes. Some have never worked anywhere else.

Damn, it's going to be hard for me to boycott a company I avoid already. This just stinks!

I read a whole lot of carping in those threads about what crap Hershey's produces, and how the authors never buy that crap any more and have long preferred to buy the fine Belgian stuff or whatever.

Duh. Ya stop buying it, ya think somebody's going to continue to pay people to produce it?

Now actually, as I understand it, Hershey's is pretty strong in the US, and its main competitor is Mars, which has been making inroads into its market share.

But really. It's the logic I just didn't follow. I don't think any of the people proclaiming their disdain for Hershey's knew anything about market share. I just don't think that when one makes a huge point of avoiding a company's products and buying its competitors', one really gets to complain about the company's production decisions.

I'm sorry for not using an emoticon, I thought my low-brow comment about boycotts would be obvious.

I'm personally not a huge chocolate fan so I don't buy the "fine Belgian" stuff either, but that's neither here nor there.

Even though I think Hershey's chocolate is sub-standard, that doesn't mean I am unaware of market share and the Hershey-Mars war. The military contract was a stroke of genius. Sorry, but that's a logic I don't follow. Why would not liking a product translate into knowing nothing about it? The only company I seriously 100% boycott is ConAgra Foods. Yet I pay very close attention to their business practices precisely because of my opposition. I probably know more about the company and its products than people who blithely use it and love the stuff.

I do disagree with you on your last statement. "I just don't think that when one makes a huge point of avoiding a company's products and buying its competitors', one really gets to complain about the company's production decisions."

Production decisions affect everyone regardless of whether they purchase / utilize the product or not. It's a matter of economics and social justice, not personal taste.

Production decisions affect everyone regardless of whether they purchase / utilize the product or not.

But I wasn't just talking about people who don't buy/use. I was talking about people making a huge issue of what crap the product is and how they stopped buying it long ago (much beyond what you said, and in large numbers, in the previous thread) and then denouncing its production decisions. Those are the ones that I doubt had a clue about market share etc. or noticed the ironic turn the tale might be taking.

Anyhow, I'll be glad to take you out of that column. ;)

I don't buy Maple Leaf meats because of its anti-union labour practices. Would I be entitled to denounce a decision to move production south of the border, say, to the good old union-free USofA? Yeah, I'd say so, because the issues would be pretty closely tied. But if I actively patronized a competitor for no reason but personal preference, and badmouthed the product on that basis, and if the collective identical personal choices of enough people affected a company's bottom line, I kinda think I might not.

If I were a vegetarian? Yeah ... at least I'd be an equal-opportunity objector.

Ever since the pet food thing, I have taken to reading labels a LOT more carefully, and have put everything that says "Made in China" back on the shelf.

I seem to remember that, according to the A&B Biography episode on him, that's what Milton S. Hershey said, when a construction foreman bragged to him about the new bulldozer working on his factory expansion in the 1930s, that could "do the work of twenty men".

I suspect that today's Hershey CEOs would dance around with glee, and order up a dozen MORE bulldozers, and pink slips for 240 workers!

Both the Masterfoods (M&M/Mars) plant nearby and another candy company whose name escapes me are planning on hiring more workers here. Granted neither one is looking to hire 900 people, but how come they can somehow "compete" while Hershey can't?

But I forget...Lenny obviously needs a new limo (the one he bought last week is already out of style) :sarcasm: