Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Kisses Not So Sweet

Hershey's Moving to Mexico???
Rumors are Hot in Chocolate Land
Hershey's is America's largest candy maker with annual earnings in excess of $ 5 Billion and more than 13,000 employees worldwide. The town of Hershey has streetlamps in the shape of candy kisses and lies in the Amish area of bucolic eastern Pensylvania. Since 1893 the company founded by Milton Hershey has grown and prospered. However, like most businesses the sour apple of economics caught up with the candy maker and last February the company announced a cutback of about 10% of its workforce or about 1,500 employees. By year's end the company will no longer operate in Canada, Oakdale, CA, Naugatuck, CT or Reading PA. The bittersweet truth is that the company is indeed building a plant in Monterey, Mexico and has parntered with a South Korean candy maker, but most of the chocolate will still be, as Bruce Sptingsteen might say, "Made in the USA."
Of the 1500 employees who Hershey's will kiss goodby, those over age 50 were offered, uh, I guess you could say, chocolate handshakes that included early retirement packages and added substantially to their benefits plans. One group that is uniquely affected are the families in which both spouses work for Hershey's and that includes more than 100 couples in the Hershey, PA plant. Wow, those marriages must be sweet.
Besides making chocolate in Hershey, which can be observed in Hershey Chocolate World, the community is quite the tourist attraction. The Hotel Hershey is a four star, four diamond hostlery and an active place hosting meetings and conventions, and Hershey Park draws scads of people and they even have one of the top medical clinics in the state.
There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but there are plenty of ways to enjoy your chocolate in Hershey from Reese's pieces to chocolate syrup or a steaming hot cup of cocoa. Reminds me of a tee shirt that was the favorite of a friend of mine that read, "Hand over all your chocolate and nobody will get hurt."
Dr. Forgot

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