Chocolate Workers' Sit-down Strike
Derry Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Hershey's Chocolate Workers Local 1 (CIO) responded to a labor-management impasse on April 2, 1937 by initiating the first sit-down strike in Pennsylvania and in the confectionery industry. The strike was ended by strike-breaking violence and government mediation. The union lost two subsequent representative elections. In 1939 workers affiliated with the Bakery & Confectionery Workers Local 464 (AFL).
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On April 2, 1937, workers of Hershey's Chocolate Workers Local 1 walked off the job and stayed put, launching the first sit-down strike in Pennsylvania and in the entire confectionery industry. The action erupted amid a labor-management standoff in the company town Milton Hershey had built, and it ended in strike-breaking violence and government mediation. The union lost the elections that followed, and by 1939 workers had realigned with an AFL local instead.
Why it matters
The Hershey sit-down captures the volatile, decade-defining struggle over industrial unionism in the 1930s, showing that even a paternalistic model company was not immune to the era's labor upheavals.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the mid-1930s, America was in the grip of the Great Depression and a decade-long struggle over who spoke for the industrial worker. The Wagner Act of 1935 had just given workers the legal right to organize and bargain collectively, and a wave of new unions surged into factories that had never seen one. The most dramatic tool of the moment was the sit-down strike — workers stopping their machines and simply refusing to leave the plant, so the company could not bring in replacements. The great Flint auto sit-down against General Motors electrified the country over the winter of 1936–37.
That energy reached Derry Township, the company town Milton Hershey had built around his chocolate factory. Hershey was famous for a kind of benevolent paternalism — model housing, a park, a school, jobs when jobs were scarce anywhere else. But paternalism and unionism pull in opposite directions: one asks workers to trust that the company knows best, the other insists workers speak for themselves.
When a labor-management impasse hardened in the spring of 1937, the tension in that carefully planned town finally broke into the open. What happened next put Hershey, of all places, into the national story of industrial labor.
People & events
On April 2, 1937, members of the Chocolate Workers Local 1, affiliated with the CIO, answered the stalemate by sitting down — the first sit-down strike in Pennsylvania and the first ever in the confectionery industry. They stayed inside the plant, betting that occupation would force a settlement.
It did not end the way the strikers hoped. The occupation was broken by strike-breaking violence, and government mediators stepped in to bring the standoff to a close. In a town this closely bound to a single employer, not everyone sided with the strikers — loyalties ran in more than one direction, and the confrontation left hard feelings.
The aftermath was bruising for the CIO local. It lost two subsequent elections to represent the workers, and by 1939 the workforce had realigned instead with a local affiliated with the rival AFL, the Bakery & Confectionery Workers. The workers ended up organized — but under a different banner than the one that had launched the dramatic walkout two years earlier.
Its place in the American story
The Hershey sit-down is a compact lesson in the biggest domestic story of the 1930s: the fight to establish industrial unionism across American manufacturing. The sit-down tactic itself was the era's signature weapon, and to see it appear in a chocolate factory — not steel, not autos — shows how completely that struggle swept through the whole industrial economy.
Just as telling is the outcome. The rivalry between the CIO and the AFL, the two great labor federations of the age, played out on this shop floor: a CIO drive faltered, and an AFL local ultimately carried the day. The reversal is a reminder that the union upheaval of the decade was not a single tide but a contest with many currents and no guaranteed winners.
And it punctures a comfortable myth. If even a celebrated model company, built by a founder who prided himself on caring for his workers, was not spared the era's conflict, then the labor question of the 1930s was truly national — bigger than any one employer's good intentions.
If you visit
Stand here and picture the company town as a whole system — the factory, the housing, the park, the school — all radiating from one industry. The marker sits in that landscape of planned paternalism, which is exactly what makes the story of a strike here so striking.
This is a place to think about how a single word — "first" — can hide a hard story. The walkout was pioneering, but it did not end in victory for the union that launched it, and the plaque doesn't pretend otherwise. Read it slowly and you'll notice how much complicated history is folded into a few lines.
If you're building a road trip around the Hershey area, let this marker be the counterweight to the sweeter attractions nearby. It's a short, sobering stop that reframes the whole town: behind the famous brand was a real workforce that, in the spring of 1937, decided to speak for itself.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Chocolate Workers' Sit-down Strike of 1937
Themes & tags
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