In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).

Harika Duygu Ozer, one of the students involved in the protest, told The New York Times:

I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA, that we will not be your captive workers.

As we reported last summer, students recruited for a cultural exchange program found themselves instead all but indentured to a factory in Palmyra, Penn., where they were made to perform dangerous work loading Hershey products with no safety protection for less than the minimum wage. In addition, the students stayed in housing provided by the Hershey contractor, for which it overcharged. Rents were deducted from the students’ pay.  

In August, the students staged a sit-in at the factory to protest their working conditions and pay abuses by the Hershey subcontractor, Excel Logistics. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale was arrested for taking part in the sit-in.

Working with Jobs with Justice and the National Guestworker Alliance, the student protesters’ actions led to a State Department investigation that found widespread abuses of a program that was designed to be a cultural exchange for students from abroad. Students who take part in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program are admitted on a J-1 visa.

In a statement issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Thursday, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey and Immigration Policy Analyst Daniel Costa wrote:

Our research has shown that corporations and labor recruiters like CETUSA are using the J-1 visa Exchange Visitor Program—and especially the SWT program, which admitted 132,000 workers last year—to avoid hiring unemployed U.S. workers and paying state and federal payroll taxes. In Pennsylvania, a state with a 7.6 percent unemployment rate, scarce jobs in rural areas (such as Palmyra, the site of the Hershey plant) should first be offered to local unemployed workers. In addition, the use of subcontractors as a way to keep employees from unionizing should be banned. The Hershey Company has successfully used the J-1 program as a way to diminish the bargaining power of its workers.

As urged by the AFL-CIO in its public comments on the SWT, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Ruth announced that the list of jobs prohibited for exchange students traveling on a J-1 visa would be expanded to include construction, roofing and most industrial work.

But scrutiny of the Summer Work Travel program won’t end there. An investigation by the Associated Press also found SWT students pressed into service in the sex industry.