That’s because the iconic candy company closed its longtime and historic Hershey’s East plant in its namesake Pennsylvania town, idling some 600 Bakery Workers (BCTGM) members. There’s still another Hershey’s plant there, BCTGM researcher Matthew Clark, who tracks the candy company, told Press Associates.
“But the exodus from Hershey has been going on for a long time,” he adds.
Hershey’s departure from Hershey – a company town dominated by the candy firm and HersheyPark – is a symbol of the increasing trend of the outsourcing and off-shoring of U.S. factory jobs. That trend has been increasing in the last decade, according to a new report, Outsourced: Sending America’s Jobs Overseas, published last month by Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
“They want to outsource, build plants in Mexico, shut down American factories and move stuff around,” Chocolate Workers Local 464 Business Manager Dennis Bomberger told a British newspaper, quoted in the report.
The irony of the candy company’s plan to move operations from its Hershey’s East plant to Mexico, while still keeping the Hershey’s West plant open – and even pumping money in to modernize it, Clark says – is that candy isn’t the most-outsourced/ or off-shored manufacturing sector in the U.S.
That title, the report says, goes to furniture. Where workers in the Carolinas used to make our tables and chairs, by 2007 93.5% of furniture came from overseas, says the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, four times as much as a decade before.
And in 2007, more than 70% of nine other manufactured products came from overseas, USBIC added. They included some very technologically sophisticated goods, such as medicinals (86%), industrial valves (78%) and machine tools (77%). Also imported: Two-thirds of the nation’s computers.
In some cases, multi-national firms first outsource jobs to other manufacturers – who then offshore the jobs to take advantage of cheap labor abroad, the report adds.
The outsourcing and off-shoring situation is getting worse and it’s hitting more than just factories, the report notes. It even hits state and local government workers.
The Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that 43 states had off-shored some jobs, such as running food stamp programs. And sometimes when they didn’t, the firms they outsourced the jobs to did.
For example, Ohio got stimulus law funds for the EnergyStar program, encouraging people to retrofit appliances to make them energy efficient. Then-Gov. Ted Strickland banned use of such money for jobs offshore. But Ohio selected a Texas firm, Parago, Inc., to handle calls from consumers about EnergyStar rebate checks – and Parago subcontracted that task to a call center in El Salvador.
“As the Great Recession has worn on, outsourcing American jobs to foreign locations generated enormous corporate revenues,” the Working America report points out. “Between 2007 and 2009, off-shoring yielded $30 billion in revenues worldwide and grew by 25%, according to data compiled by IDC, a market intelligence firm.
“Many large multinational corporations remain committed to shifting production overseas. A 2008 survey of 66 large multinationals by Watson Wyatt found 42% were likely to offshore their production to low-cost countries, in addition to reducing their human resources head count in their headquarters (26%) and chopping the cost of administering employee benefits through outsourcing (22%),” the report added.
“Back-office jobs in finance, information technology, human resources and procurement are increasingly popular targets for off-shoring by global companies.
After surveying the largest Global 1000 corporations, the Hackett Group predicted in 2009 that companies would shift more than 350,000 back-office positions overseas at the same time as those firms acted to limit new employment and dismiss domestic workers.
“By 2010, acceleration in off-shoring would bring the total number of such back-office jobs to 800,000 and allow companies to save nearly $30 million per year. By 2010, Hackett expected one in four IT jobs in global corporations to be offshore.”
It quoted Hackett Chief Research Officer Michael Janssen as adding: “For most companies, if and when they do start to restaff in IT, finance and other functions coming out of this recession, the large majority of the jobs they create will be in India and other low-cost labor markets.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
For more information
Read the report on the Working America website.
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That’s because the iconic candy company closed its longtime and historic Hershey’s East plant in its namesake Pennsylvania town, idling some 600 Bakery Workers (BCTGM) members. There’s still another Hershey’s plant there, BCTGM researcher Matthew Clark, who tracks the candy company, told Press Associates.
“But the exodus from Hershey has been going on for a long time,” he adds.
Hershey’s departure from Hershey – a company town dominated by the candy firm and HersheyPark – is a symbol of the increasing trend of the outsourcing and off-shoring of U.S. factory jobs. That trend has been increasing in the last decade, according to a new report, Outsourced: Sending America’s Jobs Overseas, published last month by Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
“They want to outsource, build plants in Mexico, shut down American factories and move stuff around,” Chocolate Workers Local 464 Business Manager Dennis Bomberger told a British newspaper, quoted in the report.
The irony of the candy company’s plan to move operations from its Hershey’s East plant to Mexico, while still keeping the Hershey’s West plant open – and even pumping money in to modernize it, Clark says – is that candy isn’t the most-outsourced/ or off-shored manufacturing sector in the U.S.
That title, the report says, goes to furniture. Where workers in the Carolinas used to make our tables and chairs, by 2007 93.5% of furniture came from overseas, says the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, four times as much as a decade before.
And in 2007, more than 70% of nine other manufactured products came from overseas, USBIC added. They included some very technologically sophisticated goods, such as medicinals (86%), industrial valves (78%) and machine tools (77%). Also imported: Two-thirds of the nation’s computers.
In some cases, multi-national firms first outsource jobs to other manufacturers – who then offshore the jobs to take advantage of cheap labor abroad, the report adds.
The outsourcing and off-shoring situation is getting worse and it’s hitting more than just factories, the report notes. It even hits state and local government workers.
The Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that 43 states had off-shored some jobs, such as running food stamp programs. And sometimes when they didn’t, the firms they outsourced the jobs to did.
For example, Ohio got stimulus law funds for the EnergyStar program, encouraging people to retrofit appliances to make them energy efficient. Then-Gov. Ted Strickland banned use of such money for jobs offshore. But Ohio selected a Texas firm, Parago, Inc., to handle calls from consumers about EnergyStar rebate checks – and Parago subcontracted that task to a call center in El Salvador.
“As the Great Recession has worn on, outsourcing American jobs to foreign locations generated enormous corporate revenues,” the Working America report points out. “Between 2007 and 2009, off-shoring yielded $30 billion in revenues worldwide and grew by 25%, according to data compiled by IDC, a market intelligence firm.
“Many large multinational corporations remain committed to shifting production overseas. A 2008 survey of 66 large multinationals by Watson Wyatt found 42% were likely to offshore their production to low-cost countries, in addition to reducing their human resources head count in their headquarters (26%) and chopping the cost of administering employee benefits through outsourcing (22%),” the report added.
“Back-office jobs in finance, information technology, human resources and procurement are increasingly popular targets for off-shoring by global companies.
After surveying the largest Global 1000 corporations, the Hackett Group predicted in 2009 that companies would shift more than 350,000 back-office positions overseas at the same time as those firms acted to limit new employment and dismiss domestic workers.
“By 2010, acceleration in off-shoring would bring the total number of such back-office jobs to 800,000 and allow companies to save nearly $30 million per year. By 2010, Hackett expected one in four IT jobs in global corporations to be offshore.”
It quoted Hackett Chief Research Officer Michael Janssen as adding: “For most companies, if and when they do start to restaff in IT, finance and other functions coming out of this recession, the large majority of the jobs they create will be in India and other low-cost labor markets.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
For more information
Read the report on the Working America website.