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.”