By Daniel Victor

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Michael Morgan said The Hershey Co.’s retirement package isn’t good enough.

Theresa Whitaker said she doesn’t see any choice but to take it.

Doug Geyer would be thrilled if he were eligible.

And Scott Ail is convinced he’s out of a job.

Workers, residents and politicians have pressed The Hershey Co. for the number of local job cuts since realignment plans were announced in February. Now that they know that 600 to 650 positions will be cut, the difficult decisions begin for the candymaking workers.

Whitaker, 52, plans to unenthusiastically take the deal for early retirement. It hurts to leave, she said, but she has to look out for her children.

“We don’t want to, but we don’t really have a choice,” said Whitaker, who works in molding. “If we don’t take it and it comes up again, it’s going to be worse.”

Her friend, Alice Jones-Pressley, said she’d love to be eligible for the deal.

The Harrisburg resident has worked in the plant since she was 18. She is now 46. So even though she was hired in the same year as Whitaker, she’s left out of the offer for early retirement.

She believes the company isn’t done downsizing. “The plant is a dinosaur,” she said, suggesting further cuts are likely in the 102-year-old main plant.

“There’s a lot of upset people right now,” she said. “A lot of anger, a lot of tears.”

At 47, Geyer, of Hummelstown, is missing the cut for a retirement package. He has worked in shipping for 29 years, but he wonders whether the plant will be shut in the coming years. “It’s just not cost-efficient,” he said.

Though much of his family, including his father, has worked at the plant, he’s looking for other jobs, unsure whether he’ll be able to retire with the company or what he might lose next. He said he would have taken a buyout if he had the opportunity.

“I always wanted to be younger,” he said. “For the first time, I’m too young.”

Morgan, 50, said he plans to reject the company’s offer and stay for 10 years. A truck driver for 29 years, he said an additional four years offered by the company aren’t enough.

“That’s just not going to cut it,” he said.

Ail, 42, has 13 years at the company, so “I’m toast,” he said. If he can, he’ll take voluntary severance, which would give him two weeks of pay for each of his 13 years. Voluntary severance will be offered only if enough workers eligible for the early retirement plan don’t take it.

If he were involuntarily let go — which he believes could happen — he’d get one week of pay for each year.

“It’s clear. Either way I’m out the door,” he said.

Ail, who makes syrup, went to a union meeting yesterday that explained his options, and he said he believes the union will approve the contract when it votes Thursday or Friday.

“I’ll just get a commercial driver’s license and drive somewhere,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of options around here.”

Derry Twp. Supervisor August “Skip” Memmi said elected officials can craft plans to help workers find jobs now that the officials know how many will be cut. Several local officials had been pressing the company for a number.

“I believe that the community as a whole has always been questioning what the impact was going to be,” Memmi said. “This number allows them to understand that impact a little better and should allow them to understand that there will be chocolate-making in Derry Twp. for the foreseeable future.”

Some workers are being proactive about their future.

Lebanon County Commissioner Bill Carpenter said he got a phone call from a Hershey employee who already is looking for a job. The employee, in his 50s, has about 25 years with the company and thinks he probably will be eligible for some type of retirement incentive, Carpenter said.

“He said he won’t be able to live on that and might need another job — maybe not as good — but something to supplement,” he said.

Carpenter said a sufficient number of “supplemental” jobs are available in the area.

“It’s the jobs like at Hershey that aren’t around. That’s a career job,” Carpenter said. “Hopefully, they will give a good enough buyout that they can live with that and do some sort of supplemental job and between the two be able to get by.”

Carpenter called the announcement “better news.”

“I wouldn’t say good news, but it’s better than we originally thought, that they might close a plant,” he said. “That would have been devastating.”

Staff writer Barbara Miller contributed to this report.

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Even the good news surrounding The Hershey Co.’s future in Derry Twp. carries an aroma of uncertainty.

If a tentative agreement with the Chocolate Workers union is approved, the plants on East Chocolate Avenue and at Hershey West will keep running, ending a nagging fear that Chocolatetown, U.S.A., could lose its symbolic heart to cost-cutting measures.

But still up in the air is the number of local jobs to be lost under the company’s realignment.

A company spokesman said last night that Hershey would achieve “the majority” of expected job cuts through a “very attractive early retirement and voluntary severance plan.” How many jobs would be lost beyond that “majority” was not specified.

Yesterday’s news, like much of the communications from the company since it announced plans to lay off as many as 3,000 workers while building a plant in Mexico, was short on specifics.

“I guess we have to wait and see exactly what this is going to mean,” said Derry Twp. resident Rosemarie Rippon-Prete, who had organized a rally to save Hershey jobs. “This is a tease. It’s not the full truth yet.”

The union will present details of the tentative agreement to members at meetings this week. If approved, the agreement “fulfills our commitment to maintaining a strong presence within Derry Twp.,” the company said.

Some residents have feared the company might close its old plants. Many consider local job losses an assault on Milton S. Hershey’s vision for the company town.

“I have a feeling this is a beginning to an end of an era, and Mr. Hershey’s dream is soon to be destroyed,” Rippon-Prete said last night.

Others see job cuts as inevitable due to the changing business world and the company’s obligations to its stockholders.

The town, which features Hershey Kiss-shaped streetlights and a strong scent of chocolate, was built around the needs of the factory workers. Milton S. Hershey opened his first plant in 1905.

Dauphin County Commissioner George Hartwick III attended a rally this month along with several hundred local residents and Hershey workers. Last night, Hartwick said he was still waiting for a reply to an e-mail he wrote to Richard H. Lenny, asking the Hershey CEO to respond to questions about the local impact of the realignment.

He was e-mailed information on the union agreement from the company’s government relations director a few minutes before a call from The Patriot-News. The information also lacked an exact number on job losses, he said.

The company “holding their cards so close to their vest keeps me really confused and concerned about what the impact is going to be,” Hartwick said.

“In all of these agreements, the real impact is with the details,” he said. “And at first blush you think, obviously, The Hershey Co. must have had an idea how many jobs they wanted to reduce. If they didn’t have that number in mind, they couldn’t come to that agreement. It’d be nice to know what that total number will be.”

Without those numbers, he said, local government is having a hard time preparing for the impact.

“As an elected official, it is my responsibility to keep pressing them for more details,” Derry Twp. Supervisor Mike Pries said last night after hearing of the tentative agreement. “It is what they are not saying that has me worried.”

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR AND BARBARA MILLER
Of The Patriot-News

If you’re looking for detailed answers on The Hershey Co.’s planned layoffs — and who isn’t? — rumors and barstool chatter will have to suffice for now.

There’s plenty to go around.

The Hershey Co. announced plans last week to trim 1,500 positions from its work force in the next three years while opening a factory in Mexico. Few details beyond that have been provided to company workers or the news media.

Workers said they were told at a meeting last week that the company might cut as many as 3,000 jobs and add 1,500 positions elsewhere.

With that many jobs on the line, and a trickle-down effect that could scar the area’s economy and image, patience is thin among those anxious to hear how many of those jobs will be cut from three Derry Twp. plants.

“Companies do not make a major announcement, which details the reduction of 1,500 jobs and the construction of a plant in Mexico, and not know exactly what the plans are,” Derry Twp. Supervisor Mike Pries wrote in an e-mail. “Hershey needs to be up front with their hard-working employees and the community at large.”

It is a difficult wait.

Chuck Bricker likes to tell people that if you cut him, he’ll bleed chocolate. He’s earned that after 43 years in town, going to school here, working at the Milton Hershey School and opening Bricker’s Pizza and Restaurant on Chocolate Avenue.

So he isn’t concerned just about the lunchtime crowds he’ll lose if the 19 E. Chocolate Ave. plant shuts down, he said. He spoke softly while discussing the layoffs, often shaking his head.

The people in power aren’t from Hershey and just don’t get the town, he said.

If the chocolate factories leave town, “we won’t talk about what we are or what we have,” Bricker said. “We’ll talk about what we used to be.”

Having an afternoon brew at the Parkside Bar and Grille Wednesday, Michael Morgan said he has driven Hershey trucks for 28 years. He’s concerned for his co-workers, and they haven’t gotten straight answers, he said.

“We know what’s happening,” he said. “If you have less than 10 years in there, you’re pretty much a sitting duck.”

The layoffs are the talk of everyone who sits in the chairs at Johnny’s Down Under Barber Shop on Chocolate Avenue, owner John Christopher said. He has his share of factory-worker customers — he worked at the plant for 24 years — and he said morale is down, management included.

“A lot of people really don’t know what to think because there are so many unanswered questions,” he said.

Any layoffs at local plants would also hurt Lebanon County because The Hershey Co. employs many county residents.

In 2002, when The Hershey Co. was up for sale, the company said more employees lived in Lebanon County than Dauphin County — 3,050 to 2,200 — because housing costs and taxes are lower in Lebanon County.

The largest employer within Lebanon County is the Department of Military and Veteran Affairs, with 1,500 workers, according to the Lebanon Valley Economic Development Corp.

About 6,000 people in the Palmyra area work for the Hershey entities, which include The Hershey Co., Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Co., The Milton Hershey School and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, said Ron Fouche, chairman of the North Londonderry Twp. supervisors.

About 20,000 people live in Palmyra and its surrounding townships.

So far, local officials are cautiously optimistic that the biggest loss of jobs won’t be at the Hershey plants here.

Fouche described himself as “an eternal optimist.” But for the local workers, he termed the announcement of planned job cuts “a bummer.”

“You get concerned about them,” he said.

Retired workers also are dismayed about the news.

“I’m glad I’m out,” Arlie Heisey of Palmyra said while having breakfast with his wife, Beverly, at the Filling Station in Palmyra.

Heisey, who retired in 2002 after 46 years working for Hershey, said any job cuts would have a big impact on Palmyra.

“Everyone around here works for Hershey,” he said.

Heisey, like many, was a second-generation Hershey worker. His father worked there.

“It’s a family thing around here,” Beverly Heisey said.

Arlie Heisey said people in Lancaster County — and as far away as Perry and Schuylkill counties — work at Hershey.

“It used to be when you got your foot in the door at Hershey, you were set for life,” said Barb Blough of Hummelstown. She works in the west Hershey plant, and her dad retired after 42 years with the company.

“It’s scary. I’ve been there 16 years, and I don’t know if I’m going to have a job. Really, none of us do,” Blough said.

Virgil Huffman and Marlin Buck, both Palmyra residents and former employees, disagreed over the prospect of the company closing one of its plants in Derry Twp.

“I don’t think too much will happen in the next 10 to 15 years,” Buck said. “I think they’ll do their best to keep it going.”

“I think they want to phase all the old factories out. … I give them five years,” Huffman said.

“Where are workers going to get a job paying like that, plus the benefits? Sure, they can get a job — flipping hamburgers,” Huffman said.

Joanie Smith of North Londonderry Twp. said the announcement of job cuts “really kind of shocked me.”

“A lot of my neighbors work at Hershey,” she said.

“I would like to see the main plant kept open because it really is the town,” Smith, a former Hersheypark employee, said of the plant at 19 E. Chocolate Ave. “It is the essence of the whole town of Hershey.”

“The park and the factory and Chocolate World — it’s all part of the Hershey magic,” Smith said.

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

It is what The Hershey Co. didn’t say about its planned job cuts that generated so much angst and fear among the blue-collar workers who make the candy.

The company yesterday announced that 1,500 jobs will be cut within three years, but workers don’t know which ones. The company said it will build a plant in Mexico.

The workers who make the candy that helps define the region’s identity described the mood inside Derry Twp. plants yesterday as tense or fearful.

“Nobody knows nothing,” said George Lehman, who has been with the company for 27 years, after finishing his shift in wrapping. “It’s all just hearsay.”

Kay Brown, also ending her shift in wrapping, said the news made it difficult to keep up with a busy day in the plant.

“That’s all I’m hearing about,” she said.

The Hershey Co. hasn’t said which plants could see a reduction in positions. A company spokesman said some plants will be expanded, some will be downsized and some will be closed.

The company scheduled a meeting at 7 a.m. today at the Hershey Theatre for the employees of the 19 E. Chocolate Ave. plant. Workers at the Reese’s plant were gathered early yesterday, but one worker said officials did not answer a series of questions.

Dennis Bomberger, business manager of Chocolate Workers Local 464, said he’s worried that local plants could be closed.

“You can just hope it’s not going to be the ones here,” he said.

Bomberger said he would hope “sentimental value” would play a part in protecting the workers at the plant at 19 E. Chocolate Ave.

With 2007 being the 100th anniversary of the Hershey Kiss, he said, “Wouldn’t that be a heck of an anniversary?”

The smell of chocolate often fills the air of Hershey, and the company is similarly ingrained in the community.

The Hershey Co., which makes its famed chocolate bars and Reese’s peanut butter cups, employs about 5,400 people in the region. It is 30 percent owned by the Milton Hershey School Trust, which runs the school that provides education and housing to 1,300 disadvantaged children.

This isn’t the first time Hershey Co. employees have worked under uncertainty. The company was put up for sale in 2002, sparking massive protests in the community. A $12.5 billion offer by Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. to buy the company was derailed after the community rallied against the sale.

Derry Twp. supervisor George Porter said the community owes much to the company.

“This town was built by Milton Hershey, has been many years dependent upon The Hershey Co. for its success and quality of living, and we owe a debt of gratitude to The Hershey Co.,” he said. “We owe them an obligation of understanding, to work with them, be patient with them and support them in any way we can.”

State Rep. John Payne, R-Derry Twp., said Hershey is talking about a substantial reduction in manufacturing capacity.

“I’m very much concerned that plant closings do not affect the plants down in Derry Twp.,” he said.

It could be that the closing of production lines happen at plants outside of Derry Twp., making the company more profitable and protecting local jobs, Payne said.

“If that’s true, that makes me feel a lot better,” he said. “If they close one of the three plants here, that’s a different story.”

Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration stands ready to help any affected employees, a spokesman said.

A lot of Hershey employees live in the Palmyra area, said Palmyra Borough Council President Richard Mazzocca, and any job cuts at The Hershey Co. could also affect other area businesses, such as warehousing and packaging operations.

Mazzocca said the community is lucky to have expansion at another large employer in the area, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, which plans to add more than 2,000 jobs with the construction of facilities.

But The Hershey Co. plants are “mainstays,” with more blue-collar jobs than the medical center, Mazzocca said.

“I imagine the only reason they are going to Mexico is cheaper labor,” he said. “I think the tradition of Hershey is going to be hurt by that.”

Several dozen Hershey workers declined to comment yesterday, some fearing being singled out by management. Others would only comment anonymously.

“Sure, it concerns us, and it should concern the rest of Hershey, too,” one man said. “You know as well as I do that if this place goes, the rest of Hershey goes with it.”

“We work hard in here,” said a worker with 26 years at the company. “It seems like it’s a never-ending battle.”

It’s especially discouraging, he said, to hear the company is building a plant in Mexico. “We need jobs in America.”

One worker repeated several times: “Hershey’s not Hershey anymore.”

“You just have to wait and see what happens,” said Jim Menicheschi, who has been with the company for 17 years. “You never know what the hell’s going to happen around here.”

Staff writers Barbara Miller, Sharon Smith and Jan Murphy contributed.

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