Monday, March 19, 2007

"Saving Smiths Falls"

Just listened to the piece on the Steve Madely show from this morning... recommended listening. A brief synopsis:

Arnold Kimmell, Quicky CEO, a 47 store operation, promises three actions if the Hershey plant in Smiths Falls closes:

1. Quicky currently carries 72 different Hershey products, this will be reduced to 5 or less

2. Hershey products will not be given prominent placing in stores

3. There will be no special marketing of Hershey products

Mr. Kimmell noted Hershey sales are down 12% chain-wide, 45% in SF.

Dennis Staples noted that a meeting with Hershey officials is scheduled for the first week of April, details of when, where in Smiths Falls, and most importantly with whom from Hershey, PA should come later this week.

I'm proposing another rally to REALLY show these people what this operation means to our Town .... More thoughts on that later...

Staples noted that there has been 70M USD in improvements to the plants, including some work last week !!

Scott Reid spoke more of his proposed website at http://www.hersheypledge.ca/

CFRA is really on top of this issue, and is an important and very valuable ally in the fight to keep this plant here. Keep it up !!!

3 comments:

Erik Sorenson said...

It's gone, folks. Really gone. The union took care of that. Ask them for money to search for and bring in another company of Hershey's employment calibre.

After all, if the union (including central) won't take personal responsibility for their greed and stupidity, the rest of the world owes Smith Falls absolutely nothing.

I'll raise a finget when the union puts it's money and effort into it. It's time shop stewards and local heads found out about reality and personal responsibility.

Mike said...

Thanks for dropping in Erik ..

I happen to agree with you ... the union owns a lot of responsibility for this. In general, i'm not an overall fan of unions... they seem on the face to be very counter-productive ... it's hard to beat the competition when the union and management are battling each other.

That being said ... this is going to hurt about 20000 people in one way or another.... doesn't seem fair that around 200 made a decision that impacts so many.

A good analogy would be the frustration I feel when watching the coverage of the American presidential election ... the whole planet should get a vote !!

CQ said...

_Didn't another chocolate location close in e. Ontario (Chesterville) in recent years?
_However Nestle continues making Kitkats etc. in a factory inside of west Downtown Toronto. It is situated between two merging, mostly GO, train lines, minutes south of the Bloor subway and steps north of two crosstown streetcar lines. Many other properties lining these tracks have been getting re-developed as loft/condo buildings. You'd think the underlying urban property value would be an enticement to relocate.