Welshy
18th August 2011, 20:22
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/us/18immig.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=us
Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hersheys chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.
The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.
In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reeses candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.
Their experience of American society has been very different from what they expected.
There is no cultural exchange, none, none, said Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalian, China. It is just work, work faster, work.
From the second page in the article, where the students describe their working conditions:
Ms. Ozer said she worked an eight-hour shift that began at 11 p.m.
You stand for the entire eight hours, she said. It is the worst thing for your fingers and hands and your back; you are standing at an angle.
At one of the sites where she worked, she said, cameras were trained on her, and supervisors told her that if she did not want to maintain the pace of work, she should leave.
Godwin Efobi, 26, a third-year medical student from Nigeria who is studying at a university in Ukraine, said his job was moving boxes. Since I came here, I have a permanent ache in my back, Mr. Efobi said. Holding a pen is now a big task for me; my muscles ache.
Were any Pennsylvanian revleft members at their rally?
Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hersheys chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.
The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.
In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reeses candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.
Their experience of American society has been very different from what they expected.
There is no cultural exchange, none, none, said Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalian, China. It is just work, work faster, work.
From the second page in the article, where the students describe their working conditions:
Ms. Ozer said she worked an eight-hour shift that began at 11 p.m.
You stand for the entire eight hours, she said. It is the worst thing for your fingers and hands and your back; you are standing at an angle.
At one of the sites where she worked, she said, cameras were trained on her, and supervisors told her that if she did not want to maintain the pace of work, she should leave.
Godwin Efobi, 26, a third-year medical student from Nigeria who is studying at a university in Ukraine, said his job was moving boxes. Since I came here, I have a permanent ache in my back, Mr. Efobi said. Holding a pen is now a big task for me; my muscles ache.
Were any Pennsylvanian revleft members at their rally?