The candymaker said it stopped taking out life insurance policies on employees in the '90s.
Michael Moore calls them "dead peasant" policies.
The Hershey Co. is not getting any kisses from Michael Moore's ironically titled new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story."
The documentary, which opened in Harrisburg on Friday, skewers the pursuit of profits as "evil." But Moore reserves some of his harshest scorn for a little-known corporate practice of insuring the lives of even low-level employees, then reaping benefits when those employees die.
Among the companies Moore cites as profiting from the so-called "dead peasant" insurance policies is the Hershey Co.
The Derry Twp.-based chocolate maker is mentioned in the film by name and listed onscreen along with about a half-dozen other companies that Moore says engaged in the practice, which he sums up by saying:
"You're better off dead -- at least that's how some companies view their workers."
The film gives no other details about Hershey's activities, and Moore's footnotes from the film on his Web site do not mention Hershey.
Attempts to reach Moore's production company, Dog Eat Dog Films, were unsuccessful Monday.
Hershey, the nation's No. 2 candymaker, did benefit from life insurance policies on its employees, but discontinued the practice more than a decade ago, a company spokesman said Monday.
"We do not engage in the practice," Hershey spokesman Kirk Saville said. "We discontinued it in the mid-1990s."
Saville said he had no information on why the insurance policies were stopped or how many Hershey employees were insured with death benefits going to the company.
"That I don't know," he said. "That was a long time ago."
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