Three Pennsylvania labor leaders were detained by police Wednesday during a protest of working conditions for foreign students at a Hershey distribution center in Palmyra, Pa.
Labor activists said that the students had to pay between $3,000 and $6,000 to come to the United States on J-1 travel visas for the summer, and that after deductions for housing they’ve been earning a mere $40 to $140 in exchange for working 40-hour weeks. Stephen Boykewich, a spokesman for the National Guestworker Alliance, an advocacy group for guest workers in the U.S., said that the students were recruited in their home countries, mostly in Eastern Europe and Asia, and were offered the opportunity to visit America and improve their English.
Boykewich said that roughly 400 students were working at the plant and that the "vast majority" of them have walked out.
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