OAKDALE, CALIF. — On a warm May weekend in this Central Valley town, the irony was as thick as melting fudge.
As usual, the annual Chocolate Festival was drawing hordes of fun-seekers. However, they were streaming in by the thousands just two weeks after Hershey Co. -- Oakdale's biggest employer and the nation's biggest candy company -- announced its plan to close its sprawling plant, eliminate all 575 jobs and open a new factory in Monterrey, Mexico.
On one side of busy Yosemite Avenue, the festival drew children to games where they slathered their heads in syrup as their parents patiently stood in line to buy bookend-size chunks of toffee.
Across the street, to frequent, approving honks from motorists, protesters waved signs denouncing the company whose philanthropic, long-dead founder is still reverently referred to by some local employees as Mr. Hershey. One man wore a T-shirt that said on the front: "Where did 'the great American candy bar' go?" Asked for the answer, he whirled around to display the back: "Mexico!"
For Hershey workers in Oakdale, globalization is no longer just an abstraction. Like legions of other Americans, they suddenly face questions as immediate as how to make a living and as far-reaching as whether their 20th century manufacturing skills will count for much anywhere else. Production at the plant is to be phased out by the end of the year.
When she heard the news, Mabel McNaught, a school custodian, wondered how her family would recover. Her husband, Philip, 50, is a forklift driver at the plant, and she figures that finding another job nearby with similar pay and benefits won't be easy.
"I was devastated," she said. "I just started crying."
The sign she held as traffic snaked past the protest was cautionary: "Who's next?"
The 113-year-old company has described the plant shutdown as part of a "global supply-chain transformation." Some 3,000 of Hershey's 13,000 workers will lose their jobs, including as many as 900 in the company's hometown of Hershey, Pa., where the streetlights are shaped like Kisses. By 2010, Hershey says, the moves will save shareholders as much as $190 million annually.
"The financials are compelling," Chief Executive Richard H. Lenny told a meeting of market analysts in February, saying labor costs in Mexico are 10% of those in the United States. Asked about the negative publicity that would come with the plant closures, he said the decisions were "gut-wrenchingly difficult -- but in the best interests of the business."
