More than 1,000 Hershey’s workers vote on plan to unionize Virginia plant
Around 1,300 workers at a Hershey’s candy manufacturing plant in Stuarts Draft, Virginia, are voting on whether to unionize, in a move organizers say is led by older workers seeking to ensure good benefits for newer employees.
The ballots for the mail-in election to join the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union will be sent to workers on 24 February, with results to be counted on 24 March.
The Hershey Company is publicly opposing the effort, encouraging workers to vote against it and hiring the union-busting Labor Relations Institute to hold captive audience meetings with workers. The LRI has also created an anti-union website ahead of the election, and reportedly made “union-free” lawn signs to distribute throughout the community. Workers attwo of seven Hershey plants in the US are currently represented by unions.
A worker at the Virginia plant, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the union organizing drive began in September. The worker said employees suffer from a lack of respect and dignity on the job, grueling work schedules and conditions, and a two-tier system in which younger and newer workers are paid less than previous groups of employees.
The union drive is being led by longtime workers nearing retirement, who are trying to ensure incoming workers are afforded the same pay, benefits, and working conditions they received when they began.
“When you work seven days a week and you don’t know when you’re getting a day off, you’re just living so you can go to work,” said the worker. “We’re not the happy place to work that you would think a chocolate plant would be right now.”
The worker described a strict disciplinary attendance system that reprimands
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