Discussion 01.3: The Hershey Company There Are Two

Discussion 01.3: The Hershey CompanyThere are two perspectives from which to understand the ethical issues at The Hershey Company. From the perspective of the management of the company, it is necessary to cut costs for the plants in Pennsylvania plants to safeguard the entire company from collapse. “The company had asked union workers in two of its highest-cost Pennsylvania plants to accept higher health insurance premiums and take a wage cut” (Warren and Price, 2007). By bringing the costs down in the Pennsylvania plants, the management can attract future projects from the company’s other plants. From this perspective, one option available to the management is to cut wages and ask workers to contribute a higher portion for insurance. Labor is a major recurrent expenditure in this plant. For this reason, reducing the cost of labor will make the plant more efficient. Failure to do this may lead to all the workers becoming redundant. Improved efficiency would justify additional investment of $30 million in the Pennsylvania plants. From this perspective, the ethical question is fully justified by business sense. The interest of the workers is also taken care of, as a low paying job is better than no job at