Yin Fung Tan, 23, a student from Malaysia, spent the summer at Morey’s Piers, an amusement complex on the New Jersey shore, earning an average of $300 a week as a cashier and ride operator. The most important thing she learned was “to look people in the eye and speak to them,” she said. “In our culture we never do that.”
Company officials at Morey’s Piers said they recruit more than 700 foreign students each summer, traveling to job fairs from Singapore to Dublin. All start at $7.25 an hour and work alongside American students. “They learn from each other, and it changes their lives,” said Denise Beckson, director of human resources.
But labor activists asserted that the alleged abuses were far more typical than officials acknowledge. They said even students in lighter hospitality jobs are often underpaid, poorly housed and threatened with losing their visas or right to return if they complain.
“While the State Department was asleep at the wheel, this entire program has turned into a captive labor source where students are exploited for profit,” said Saket Soni, executive director of the guest-worker group. He said the program left U.S. workers “locked out” of steady jobs and foreign students “locked in.”
The State Department already has rules in place to protect foreign student workers, who must be paid minimum wage and are banned from certain risky or sensitive jobs, such as patient care and adult entertainment. Department officials said they are planning to add further safeguards before the next students arrive.
In the Hershey case, however, officials said only that their investigation is “ongoing” and that they have taken no action against CETUSA, Hershey or its subcontractors. In detailed formal complaints, the guest-worker group described systematic efforts to intimidate students who complained and charged that government investigators had worked in tandem with factory managers.
CETUSA, in turn, has fought back with competing affidavits from former Hershey workers. It quoted Lenka Vavrova, a Polish student, as saying she was “ashamed” of her co-workers for causing a fuss. They all knew what to expect at the candy factory, she wrote. “If they did not like it, they should have chosen something else.”
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