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.