November 16, 2012
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Not a good time to strike you idiots
Hostess is going out of business and laying off over 18,500 workers.
Why?
Well, in one of the single stupidest moves ever made by union leaders and members, almost all of Hostess employees went on strike during an incredibly volatile period in the companies history. Hostess was filing for bankruptcy and was trying to re-organize and the union didn’t like the lowered pay.
“While the union says it is not right for the company to maintain its viability on the backs of workers, company officials said they were doing everything in their power to try and keep Hostess open.”
“In an interview with Fox Business, CEO Gregory Rayburn said many workers had already crossed picket lines this week to go back to work despite warnings by union leadership that they’d be fined.”
After the announcement to close Hostess down no comment was given my the Union leadership. Odd.
Another win for Unions. *facepalm*
http://beldenblog.com/will-unions-kill-the-twinkie/
Comments (36)
I really don’t get unions anymore. They price themselves out of the market. What is there to gain by ANYONE when this happens? What is there to gain for the union? Things like this is enough to get me to stay away from unions and the leftist politicians they back.
There comes a point when you just can’t force people into what you want. Sorry, unions. They are sucking here, as @grim_truth says, they price themselves out of a lot of work. Only the state wants to hire them because they are the only ones who don’t have to watch their spending.
Unions are outdated and no longer serve a valid purpose, imo.
Unions are one of the reasons all the jobs went to China
Unions operate for a single purpose: to perpetuate themselves. They are parasites, and once they’ve killed the host, they move on to another.
I think Unions absolutely still serve a purpose, though they certainly overstep their bounds (and in this case, make really stupid decisions). They SHOULD exist in conjunction with OSHA and other agencies that serve to protect employees from hazardous/inhumane conditions. I don’t think that we can ever expect big companies to care more about employee safety/health than their profits– there are some companies that only protect employees by doing as much as is minimally necessary without breaking the law. Not to mention you see so many companies outsourcing their labor to third world countries where labor is cheap and they can take advantage of the workers. Personally, I like having that extra layer of protection, though it could be (and certainly should be) improved upon.
@whyzat - Yeah… to people willing to work 80 hour weeks for 5 cents an hour… Is that what you want for America?
Hostess ? Nuuu !
Not the Ding Dongs !! Φ ≡
Couldn’t have anything to do with poor management and a more health conscious marketplace?
to my knowledge, they weren’t asking for much. Hostess made $2 billion last year, and its CEO raked in over $2 million. that doesn’t sound like a failing company. unions exist for exactly this type of thing: when business owners are more than happy to cut their workers’ pay so they can have more in their own pockets.
also, i live in St. Louis. rumors of shops closing down and people getting laid off have been spreading for a long while. blaming in the strike is nonsense.
@tendollar4ways - You are right on.Union management sucks bigtime!
@whyzat - Sweetie, virtually ALL jobs in China are unionized. It is one reason why Walmart almost decided not to open their stores in China. It was a precondition – unionise Walmart employees in China, or stay out of China.
@TheyCallHerEcho88 - As opposed to $40 per hour for 40 hours per week? Expensive benefits that price companies right into bankruptcy? Unions are thieves. You and I both know it. They are what killed GM and Chrysler. Never forget it.
@flapper_femme_fatale - Kinda like the gov huh?Takes billions from folks and keeps a buttload for itself and works a few days a week if we are lucky and plays the rest of he time.I mean look at all the screwing around they are always doing.
I believe this is only the first of many many more to follow.
x_x
My dad told me that unions were corrupt. He also told me just think about how corrupt business would be without them though.
I was bemoaning the loss of Ding-Dongs and Sno-Balls this morning. In this current show, I guess Dee-Dee shall just have to eat Little Debby.
Don’t worry folks. Twinkies have a shelf life of about 10,000 years.
@flapper_femme_fatale - I’m not much in tune to this whole thing, but I do remember reading that even though they grossed 2.5 billion, they reported a net loss of 341 million.
@CanuckFascist - I’m not saying they should get rich (not that they would, though $40/hour is more than 4X any wage I’VE ever gotten), but why do people think it’s just fine and dandy for someone else to work crazy hours for a ridiculously low salary? If there were no unions, I think they’d be making minimum wage– anything the company thinks it CAN get away with, it will TRY to get away with.
A friend of mine over on facebook penned the following alternative perspective which ought to be considered:
“Watching all the posts about how the Hostess debacle “proves” the evil of organized labor. It is stunning how little awareness people have of being played…this is epic public relations work that seeks to blame the unions for the strategic greed of the ownership.
The mgmt of Hostess had long planned to shut down several of the plants, and the strike is only a pretext to accelerate the long plann
ed liquidation of the company. It’s what private equity does so well…buy a company, load it with debt, and sell it off for spare parts. All the while preserving generous executive compensation for the vultures who conduct the orderly rape of the company’s assets and the workers who actually created the products that, at one time, conferred value on a company. (No longer. Employees are liabilities and products undesirable expense units.)
Also, too, Eastern Airlines, mentioned in an earlier thread like some kind of magical incantation. The name Frank Lorenzo should ring some bells about why that company went down, but if you ignorant bastards (you know who you are) want to believe that it was the unions’ fault that a profitable company was sold for scrap, you’re clearly too goddam dumb to breathe.”
The management went into Chapter 11 not once but twice. Fool me once shame on me, but try to fool me twice for sure a lot of smart bakers did not take the bait.
Union workers are not stupid. In fact you cannot run Hostess by scab workers. The nationwide bakeries can deliver fresh baked goods, something that is not easily offshored.@TheTheologiansCafe - Thank you for an endorsement of the unions. Unions ideally is staffed by very skilled workers. There are some unions that can have scab workers. The truck driver’s union capitulated to Hostess because they are sort of a dime a dozen.@TheyCallHerEcho88 - Thank you too for your well thought out comment. Unfortunately I can’t see too many smart well rounded folks here but you would think a lot of middleclass people would see the wisdom of having unions and other protections from the greed of the super rich.
@PrisonerxOfxLove - Yeah, keep hoping.
@Freedomscrewed - the only difference being, you can vote an elected official out of office. the same can’t be said for CEOs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/gregory-rayburn-raise_n_2147043.html
“UNIONS SUCK OMG”
but nah…
Homeboys at Hostess were going hogwild for the money.
You know, free markets are good. But if you aren’t going to scrutinize all the economic agents involved perhaps your opinions are going to come out skewed.
So much for their ho hos from Santa this year with no job.
Hostess clearly showed a sustained inability to effectively adapt to their changing business reality. While it seems prudent to blame their failure on labor unions, it is unlikely Hostess possessed the ability to recover. An opinion likely shared by union members, and demonstrated by Hostess after their previous reorganization. Blogs, newspapers, and pundits have been quick to state that the iconic brands and the jobs that produced them are lost forever, but time will show that many of those brands will remain under new ownership. The union members are hoping their jobs are tied to the fate of those brands.
@justfinethanku I would almost always agree with you, I’m not pro-union, but in this particular situation did you actually read up on this? Apparently there were workers who, if they gave up the concessions Hostess was asking, would be working for less than the unemployment benefits they could get. So for them I don’t know about it being a good time, but it’s probably not a bad time to strike either.
@flapper_femme_fatale - And a CEO is hired and can be fired just like a politician can be voted for and if not done the proper job can be voted out.Try again! Oh and BOTH can get away with lieing and people believe it!
@Freedomscrewed - even as middle management at my job, i do not have the ability to fire the owner of the business. so i think your comparison doesn’t add up. private business is decidedly anti-democratic and more oligarchical.
Everyone talks about CEO’s and other management taking big bucks. Why doesn’t anyone ever comment on Union Bosses taking big bucks? Maybe because they don’t want to end up like Jimmy Hoffa
@PrisonerxOfxLove - You aren’t even capable of calculating ATC/AFC/MC, etc of a business. Probably don’t even know how to calculate the multiplier in macro… And weren’t you a coach, and not an actual teacher jajaja?…
You can lie to yourself all you want. No professor would accept any legit paper that’s only three sentences.
You are an idiot simply based on the fact you try to impress people with shit that makes no sense. All you do is use the same stupid talking points as the rest of republicans do. You spent how much of your last two years on Xanga talking out of your ass while I have actually gone through econ courses?
I think you are one of the saddest fucks on Xanga, Curtis A Bell. You talk or attempt to troll. And yet some of us are productive people away from the keyboards…. considering how much time your fat ass is around Xanga, you can’t be productive.
@complicatedlight - Uh…
“
the roots of this debacle go back to when Hostess entered its first
bankruptcy in 2004
. Not unlike the situation automakers would find
themselves in a few years later,
the company was collapsing under the
weight of flagging sales, overly generous union contracts replete with
ridiculous work rules, and gobs of debt
. But unlike the automakers, the
five years Hostess spent trying to fix itself in Chapter 11 didn’t fix
its fundamental problems.
Instead, they set the stage for its
eventual demise. A private equity company, Ripplewood Holdings, paid
about $130 million dollars to take Hostess private, and the company’s
two major unions, the Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco
Workers and Grain Millers International Union, sacrificed about $110
million in annual wages and benefits. But its labor contracts were still
deeply flawed. Worse yet, the company left bankruptcy saddled with more
debt than it went in with — “an unusual circumstance that the company
justified on expectations of ‘growing’ into its capital structure,” as
Kaplan put it.
Suffice to say, Hostess didn’t do much growing. It
continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars making and selling
starchy snacks that much of the public had lost its taste for, while
failing to launch any great new products. The interest on its loans
swelled the company’s debt. By January 2012, it was back in Chapter 11,
trying to wrestle a new contract with more concessions from its unions.
Hostess
insisted that unless workers accepted further cuts, the company would
have to shut its doors for good. That’s the sort of threat that
distressed companies often make in labor negotiations, and unions are
inclined to consider it a bluff. But after getting a look inside
Hostess’ books, the Teamsters concluded that the threat was serious. Its
members narrowly approved the contract in September.
The bakers’
union, which represents about a third of the Hostess’ workforce, did
not. Instead they launched a strike last week that Hostess CEO Greg
Rayburn says forced the company to take the final, dramatic step of
liquidating everything and firing workers
.”
You were saying….?
@complicatedlight - Uh…
“
the roots of this debacle go back to when Hostess entered its first
bankruptcy in 2004
. Not unlike the situation automakers would find
themselves in a few years later,
the company was collapsing under the
weight of flagging sales, overly generous union contracts replete with
ridiculous work rules, and gobs of debt
. But unlike the automakers, the
five years Hostess spent trying to fix itself in Chapter 11 didn’t fix
its fundamental problems.
Instead, they set the stage for its
eventual demise. A private equity company, Ripplewood Holdings, paid
about $130 million dollars to take Hostess private, and the company’s
two major unions, the Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco
Workers and Grain Millers International Union, sacrificed about $110
million in annual wages and benefits. But its labor contracts were still
deeply flawed. Worse yet, the company left bankruptcy saddled with more
debt than it went in with — “an unusual circumstance that the company
justified on expectations of ‘growing’ into its capital structure,” as
Kaplan put it.
Suffice to say, Hostess didn’t do much growing. It
continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars making and selling
starchy snacks that much of the public had lost its taste for, while
failing to launch any great new products. The interest on its loans
swelled the company’s debt. By January 2012, it was back in Chapter 11,
trying to wrestle a new contract with more concessions from its unions.
Hostess
insisted that unless workers accepted further cuts, the company would
have to shut its doors for good. That’s the sort of threat that
distressed companies often make in labor negotiations, and unions are
inclined to consider it a bluff. But after getting a look inside
Hostess’ books, the Teamsters concluded that the threat was serious. Its
members narrowly approved the contract in September.
The bakers’
union, which represents about a third of the Hostess’ workforce, did
not. Instead they launched a strike last week that Hostess CEO Greg
Rayburn says forced the company to take the final, dramatic step of
liquidating everything and firing workers
.”
You were saying….?
@CanuckFascist - I’m not saying unions shouldn’t be blamed for wanting to secure a reasonable life for their membership…of course, as with all processes having many players, there are many players here. i *was* saying, by way of reproducing a post that appeared elsewhere, that there are other points of view on this.