Right. So when your bosses screw up and jeopardize the well-being of your company, what you should do is go on strike, thereby guaranteeing that you'll have no job. Makes perfect sense.
Right. So when your bosses screw up and jeopardize the well-being of your company, what you should do is go on strike, thereby guaranteeing that you'll have no job. Makes perfect sense.
Hope is the denial of reality
I read Loki's link. I've read local material. I've read all three of your links. And not one source, not even Kos, has has said anything like what you've concluded nor have they led me making up my own mind in that direction by reading between the lines. What I see is that Hostess went bankrupt, lenders stepped in and they and the other interested parties *including the unions* tried to get things functional but they weren't able to pull it off. Management hasn't helped the situation but it's not what's been driving the company under either. The hedge funds might be managing to salvage some personal profit off it, everyone says they just don't have the information on that subject, but what killed the company were fixed costs substantially in excess of revenue. And the first and still one of the foremost of those fixed costs were labor's requirements. The debt-service *which is the only thing I can think of which you might be referring to* is still only a fraction of the prexisting fixed costs which were pushing the company in this direction already, which had pushed it over the brink the first time just eight years.Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
If I had to.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Hope is the denial of reality
To be fair to the baker's union, I think they were put in an intenable position by a larger union: the teamsters. Hostess' bakeries were supposedly not-terrible. And the baker's union was clearly willing to make concessions.
The radical ones were the Teamsters, who protected completely (comically?) insane work rules that destroyed the Hostess distribution network. EG drivers couldn't load or unload trucks. A separate Teamster arriving in a separate truck was the only person allowed to unload Hostess goods at the retail point of sales. Also, different kinds of goods couldn't be on the same trucks, thus duplicating this insane inefficiency.
As far as I can tell, the baker's union did their best to work with the business. But the business managers couldn't effectively stand up to the Teamsters, who ran Hostess like some kind of mafia racket. Hostess bakery operations weren't in bad shape; hopefully whomever buys Hostess (probably a blessed venture capitalist) will be able to rip-up the Teamster agreement and give the baker's a fair chance to prosper.
Every article I've seen says that Hostess and the Teamsters made a deal, it was the Bakers which couldn't reach common ground.
What I find absolutely disgusting and unacceptable (if true) is that the Bakers union refused to make a deal which involved a cut in wages similar to that the Teamsters had accepted as it could affect wages throughout the industry. That to me is totally unacceptable, the Bakers union in negotiations with Hostess should represent the best interests of the Hostess employees only - not employees of other companies.
If true, if I was a now-unemployed ex-Hostess baker I'd be pissed off to know the reason I lost my job was that my union put the interests of those not involved with the company above the interests of the company's own employees.
My understanding is they made a deal with the Teamsters, but it was still a pretty shitty and unviable deal because the Teamsters are a much more powerful union. So Hostess was hoping to make up the difference dealing with the bakers, who were the less powerful party but didn't give-way this time around.
It's still a "@ unionz" story as far as I'm concerned, but mainly because a larger union (Teamsters) screwed over a smaller union (Bakers) who were then felt backed into a corner.
This really depends on the scope and size of the union. There are several huge unions that understand that to many small cuts can damage the workers industry wide. UAW being the most (in)famous, and there were also a couple of unions backing the walmart protests. Many of the rights we use now were achieved during the more positive rise of unions during the industrial revolution thanks to unions that expanded past a single business or industry. Why should an entire industry suffer, through lower median wages, because a couple of vultures were taking away what one company of employees had earned? As I mentioned above, striking yourself out of a job isn't the best thing to experience, but there are already companies jockeying for Hostess' property, and while there will obviously be some consolidation, the union(s) must think that in the long run this was the better way to go. I don't think it will be to long before we see twinkies and little bags of powdered donuts again.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 11-24-2012 at 08:00 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Ignoring the fact that most of the jockeying is for intellectual property, and the workers that will be rehired will probably have lower wages than they were offered here (and if they could have gotten higher wages before, why would they still be working for this company?).
Hope is the denial of reality
Where are you gathering the information that wages will fall that drastically? The last article you linked to talked about how wages at Hostess had already fallen 20%+, even after OT, and that they were trying to push them lower. Do we have anything that shows Hostess was paying that far above industry average? If the products come back to market, that's going to require higher output, which could mean more man hours from the companies who pick apart Hostess. So while the jobs may not have existed (ignoring the many reasons why some people stick to a sinking ship), they may exist in the near future. Even without the exact products returning under different names, Hostess commanded a lot of shelf space in grocery and big box stores, space that's going to be filled by its competitors.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Because the primary reason Hostess went bankrupt was because their labor costs were too high. Other companies in the field aren't going bankrupt. Do the math.
Hope is the denial of reality
labor costs is far to broad of a phrase far a sane person to simply claim they were paying individual wages that were far above industry standards. They may well might have been (haven't seen anything claiming its 20%+ above average), or it could have been an inefficiency issue. Who wants to make a joke about to many cooks in the kitchen?
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 11-25-2012 at 01:32 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I thought sales of the sugary goodness were down a lot, Bloomberg must have been happy.
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Unions claim another "victory."
Do you mean Hostess Bakeries?Dude, the Hostess management is claiming another victory, not the union workers. Hostess has been in various phases of bankruptcy for several years. The only people getting guaranteed raises were the CEOs and executive management....oh yeah, and the investor class who saw gains in stock shares or dividends. They were willing to kill the workers in exchange for corporate or investment profits.
Hostess will be able to sell the Rights to their Twinkies or Ding Dongs, to anyone who wants to pay for the recipe Patents, or buy their trademark name. Could even be a Chinese company....using Chinese bakery workers. Maybe they'll "hide" the Twinkie name under a US conglomerate, in order to offshore lower wages and lower taxes, but still give more profits to US management and their "investors".
Yes that is the only way for a company to survive when a union acts like this, glad you're cottoning on to what this sort of union activity causes.Do you mean Hostess Bakeries?
Hostess will be able to sell the Rights to their Twinkies or Ding Dongs, to anyone who wants to pay for the recipe Patents, or buy their trademark name. Could even be a Chinese company....using Chinese bakery workers. Maybe they'll "hide" the Twinkie name under a US conglomerate, in order to offshore lower wages and lower taxes, but still give more profits to US management and their "investors".
No union forced Hostess to use bad managers.
No union forced Hostess to use bad managers.
No manager forced the unions to strike the workers out of a job because they were worried about the impact on non-Hostess workers.
Which came first?
No manager forced the unions to strike the workers out of a job because they were worried about the impact on non-Hostess workers.
The strike came before the loss of all the jobs.
Management took Hostess into financial bankruptcy several years ago.The strike came before the loss of all the jobs.
Management and the unions arguably
But how many companies come out of Chapter 11 all the time? There's no guarantee that a once-bankrupt company will be able to recover and survive, but striking your way out doesn't help.
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