WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa denounced the Hershey Food Corporation's closing of its plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 300 workers out in the cold. Hershey's plan to move the jobs to a Monterey, Mexico plant shows how unfair trade deals like NAFTA continue to harm American workers.
The plant's closing continues a disturbing trend for a city that has already lost more than one-fourth of its good-paying manufacturing jobs since January 2001. Of the workers losing their jobs, 50 are Teamsters.
"That plant stood for decades in Reading, providing countless families with good wages and job security," Hoffa said. "Members of this community helped build that company and this is how they are repaid. Hershey's actions are unconscionable in this economic climate."
The Hershey plant in Reading made York Peppermint Patties and 5th Avenue bars. To date, the company has shut down six plants with this most recent closing a stage in its plan to cut 1,500 U.S. jobs.
"Pennsylvania lost nearly 60,000 jobs in the last quarter of 2008 and the estimate for the month was well over 30,000 jobs lost," Hoffa said. "When are we going to tell companies like Hershey that enough is enough?"
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents more than 1.4 million hard-working men and women in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
