Hostess, maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs, says closing business

Dear OP, Please wake up and smell the neo-robberbaron, 1%er Bullsh$t! This is nothing more than a union busting manuever, to even further screw the worker after the workers have already made concession after concession. So don't you dare blame the workers! If it wasn't for Unions, we'd all be working 12 hours a day 6 days a week under sweatshop conditions.

In the lead up to this, over the last few years, the executives got what they could. They could see the end coming. The company goes down into receivership. Who loses, the Mum and Dad investors.

Just take a look at the salaries paid to the top Union officials. Unions are not there for the workers. A long time ago they were but not now. Deals are done, individuals get rich, workers and Mum and Dad investors suffer the financial pain.

Over the decades the American Worker screwed the companies while the companies screwed the workers and both sides were dedicated to the one basic principal .... GREED.

Now you find that the economy is failing, no crap.

Don't blame the company or the unions or the workers. They are all at fault, they were all greedy.

Time to pay the piper.

P

reply to post by HUMBLEONE


And who do you think owns the unions? Ever look at what the fat cats who run the unions make while the workers fight for crums? Speaking of 1%ers... Sigh

Originally posted by PurpleChiten
reply to post by ascension211

 

O M G ! ! !

Did you know that 100% of what we eat and drink either contain or are made with a VERY SERIOUS Chemical?!?!

REALLY!!!

It's DiHydrogenMonoxide!!!

www.dhmo.org...

terrible, horrible,nasty stuff!!!

Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.

..... ya'll let him worry for just a little while before you break it to him that every single substance in the universe is a "chemical" ok?

Poor thing! having a twinkie attack are you? Guess what? Not every thing I eat has that crap in it. Maybe you eat nothing but chemical laced food. Don't lump me in that category.

Yep!
This way they can brake all the contracts and put people on the streets "legally".
Then reopen shop in the South and hire a bunch of illegals to work for pennies an hour.

Were it a CEO bonus contract we were discussing, the outrage would be tremendous if were to talk of killing their contracts

Originally posted by HUMBLEONE
Dear OP, Please wake up and smell the neo-robberbaron, 1%er Bullsh$t! This is nothing more than a union busting manuever, to even further screw the worker after the workers have already made concession after concession. So don't you dare blame the workers! If it wasn't for Unions, we'd all be working 12 hours a day 6 days a week under sweatshop conditions.

Originally posted by SheopleNation
Another example of greedy Unions being nothing but company killers. This is the result almost every single time. The stupid sheople will never get it though. ~$heopleNation

You just elected yourself president of the sheople nation?

Originally posted by ascension211

Originally posted by SheopleNation
Another example of greedy Unions being nothing but company killers. This is the result almost every single time. The stupid sheople will never get it though. ~$heopleNation

You just elected yourself president of the sheople nation?

See? ^. Just like I said, you will never get it.

But hey? Have a good laugh while those folks lose their jobs just before the holidays. I really feel bad for their kids. ~$heopleNation

reply to post by HomeBrew


I Challenge that. The workers were given a choice???? Management ran the company into the ground.
What you are saying is like telling someone.. death by gunshot or lethal injection so pick your poison.
They workers made a stand. The attitude that you should be thank full for your crumby job is bogus.
Your talking about HOSTESS not billy joe bobs canjun desserts. Pensions lost and generations working there finished. Management was not serious and was terrible. Ya they were some real smart people. You do not need a PHD in finance to figure out a plan. Someone posted earlier about the cost of profits being passed to the workers at their expense. That is exactly what happens all the time. Why cant anyone understand that. Its what corporations do all the time. The execs need more money so they pass it on to the worker. We are going to cut jobs and pay you clowns less. This isn't rocket science it is basic math. You need to make hard choices in business backed up with facts to get back to profitability. As I posted earlier. I have not a problem in the world with a CEO or his team making Billions... To blame workers that make 12 to 25 dollars an hour is silly.
Did the CEO ever talk to the people or have a long term plan??? Did he or she walk into the factories and really see what was going on??? Your going to have people milk the system and that is a fact. Most people just want
a fair shake. This is a sad day for America and unless changes are made then more are sure to follow.

So just out of curiosity, I decided to look up the financial information of the BCTGM union just to gather some numbers and here's all I could come up with:

There is a membership of about 100,000 countrywide.
There are roughly 10 top executives each earning about $84,000 each per annum

It makes me wonder... How much per year is each member paying in union dues when you take into account all other costs in running this union over and above the exec salaries, when there's only 100,000 members ?!

And they all still have their jobs.

Maybe the Hostess execs were in the wrong type of business looking at it from a long-term perspective...

im sure someone else will start making them.

Originally posted by SheopleNation
Another example of greedy Unions being nothing but company killers. This is the result almost every single time. The stupid sheople will never get it though. ~$heopleNation

I would say instead it is another example of greedy executives, taking more and more away from their workers, and stuffing more and more in their pockets and blaming it all on the unions and employees.

Even as it played the numbers game, Hostess had to face chaos in the corner office at the worst possible time. Driscoll, the CEO, departed suddenly and without explanation in March. It may have been that the Teamsters no longer felt it could trust him. In early February, Hostess had asked the bankruptcy judge to approve a sweet new employment deal for Driscoll. Its terms guaranteed him a base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and "long-term incentive" compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he'd still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.

When the Teamsters saw the court motion, Ken Hall, the union's secretary-treasurer and No. 2 man, was irate. So much, he thought, for what he described as Driscoll's "happy talk" about "shared sacrifice." Hall says he tracked Driscoll down by phone and told him, "If you don't withdraw this motion, these negotiations are done." Hostess withdrew the motion a few weeks later when Driscoll left -- the same Driscoll who, Hostess told the court in its motion, was "key" to "reestablishing" Hostess's "competitive position going forward." Abbott and Costello couldn't have made this stuff up if they'd gone to Wharton.

The board replaced Driscoll with Greg Rayburn, a restructuring expert Hostess had hired as a consultant only nine days earlier. Rayburn was a serial turnaround specialist who had worked with such high-profile distressed businesses as WorldCom, Muzak Holdings, and New York City Off-Track Betting. He became Hostess's sixth CEO in a decade. Within a month of taking over, Rayburn had to preside over a public-relations fiasco. Some unsecured creditors had informed the court that last summer -- as the company was crumbling -- four top Hostess executives received raises of up to 80%. (Driscoll had also received a pay raise back then.) The Teamsters saw this as more management shenanigans. "Looting" is how Hall described it in TV interviews.

Source

80% raises.....

reply to post by CranialSponge


84k does not seem unreasonable compared to the top 10 at Hostess.

reply to post by Pixiefyre


Without a doubt those greedy tycoons played their part in this, just as The greedy Union played theirs. I mean, look how long Hostess has been around and how their products are everywhere, including other Nations.

The amount of profit that the company has made since it's beggining is astronomical. They have their products in almost every single gas station and grocery store in America, let alone where else.

It all comes down to greed. It would also not suprise me if a Company as powerful as that knows something about a possible future collapse that we do not. I dunno. I just feel bad for the families. ~$heopleNation

reply to post by ascension211

Poor thing! having a twinkie attack are you? Guess what? Not every thing I eat has that crap in it. Maybe you eat nothing but chemical laced food. Don't lump me in that category.

I absolutely, positively GUARANTEE that every single thing you consume has DiHydrogenMonoxide in it. Abolutely, positively!!!

It oozes out of every pore of your body!!!

Originally posted by SheopleNation

Originally posted by ascension211

Originally posted by SheopleNation
Another example of greedy Unions being nothing but company killers. This is the result almost every single time. The stupid sheople will never get it though. ~$heopleNation

You just elected yourself president of the sheople nation?

See? ^. Just like I said, you will never get it.

But hey? Have a good laugh while those folks lose their jobs just before the holidays. I really feel bad for their kids. ~$heopleNation

So if companies get around paying decent wages by exporting work to what is essentially Nazi work camps (actually adjusted for inflation the people who did forced labor for the Nazis earned more) or hire illegals to work for cheap, that isnt the problem. The problem is people who want a decent wage and work under decent conditions and dont want to compete with starvewages.

People will have to eat, if Hostess will go out of buissness, somebody else will step in. Your billions in profits are not enough for you and you quit? I am sure there is somebody out there to settle for less billions, who will be happy with having less money in the bank after buying all the cars real estate and toys he wants, as opposed to buying all your cars real estate and toys and having more money in the bank.

And here's some interesting numbers from the Teamsters union:

September 11, 2009: It’s a tough economy and many Teamster members are taking benefit cuts, pay freezes, or worse. But last year our union’s highest-paid officials hiked their pay by more than a million dollars.

Many Teamster members are laid-off or taking pay cuts. But our union’s highest paid officials gave themselves average pay increases of nearly $10,000 a year. Those are the findings of the $150,000 Club Report—a comprehensive analysis of Teamster financial documents and officer compensation by the Teamster Rank and File Education and Legal Defense Foundation (TRF).

Last year, 110 Teamster officials received a salary of $150,000 or more—the highest number ever.
- Thirty-five Teamster officials made more than $200,000.
- President Hoffa received the most total compensation of any Teamster official: $383,132.

While pay for working Teamsters is flattening out, increases for our union’s highest-paid officials are fattening up. Consider these facts:
- Last year, the members of the $150,000 Club hiked their pay by a total of $1,041,276.
- Teamster officials in the $150,000 Club got an average pay increase of $10,000. That’s almost $5 an hour.
- Nineteen members of the Club got a raise of $20,000 or more.
- In his ten years in office, Hoffa has nearly doubled his annual compensation. He awarded himself a huge “housing allowance” to boost his salary above the level specified in the Teamster Constitution.

TDU.org

Wow... folks, we are definately working in the wrong industries.
Makes you wonder how much revenue that membership is drawing in...

reply to post by CranialSponge


Nobody said corrupt unions are the solution.

moral of the story don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Do you think the strikers were thinking well lets close these people down so we don't have a job to strike against.

I think people are freaking out about the no twinkies thing (well hostess) anyway my mom went to the sunrise bakery here, which is a Wonderbread/Hostess outlet and she said people were carting off twinkies and ding dongs out by the cartloads, The shop was completely out of twinkies and ding dongs. Then I went to the grocery store and decided to see if there were any twinkies in stock and there were none, also the ding dongs were gone too.



www.adn.com...=Breaking_News

reply to post by SheopleNation


Yeah it's the workers and families I feel bad for, and although people are pointing fingers at the unions. Granted the figures Cranial Sponge provided don't make them look so great, but I still place the majority of the blame on the Corporate executives. A bit more reading and I came across the following.

Source

The Teamsters union is not officially honoring the picket lines, but many individual Teamsters are refusing to cross. Teamsters accepted a concessionary contract similar to the one the bakery workers rejected in September--which included a 10.5 percent wage cut and an increase of $76 per week in employee health and welfare payments.

The contract Hostess wants to impose on BCTGM workers includes:

-- An immediate 8 percent wage cut.
-- Shifting 20 percent more of health care costs onto the workers (for some workers, this would mean an increased cost of $240 a month for medical insurance).
-- Eliminating retiree Medigap insurance, which covers gaps in Medicare.
-- Eliminating Pension Supplement to pay health and funeral costs.
-- Closing an undisclosed 10 to 12 plants.
-- Eliminating the eight-hour day, which would mean no time-and-a-half pay after eight hours per day.

In addition, the company illegally froze pension contributions mandated under the contract for all of 2012, in violation of federal law. This is still being contested before the National Labor Relations Board

THESE TAKEAWAYS follow years of the union accepting concessions as Hostess pleaded poverty during its bankruptcy. The BCTGM agreed to do this with the assurance that the company would use the savings to reinvest in the company to make it economically viable.

Instead, the company--which is now run by a private equity firm, Ripplewood Holdings, and two hedge funds--has treated the Hostess plants as a cash cow for its speculative activity.

Executives at Hostess, of course, haven't suffered. In 2002, Hostess granted its CEO a 300 percent raise, and at least nine top executives received raises between 35 percent and 80 percent. Since 2002, the company has had six CEOs---none of them could turn the company around, but all of them were paid many times what workers get, and they got golden parachutes as they left.

Workers on the line realize that the strike may push Hostess into liquidation, as the company has threatened. On November 12, the company announced the permanent closure of its Seattle and St. Louis plants. Workers feel that they aren't just striking for themselves. As one worker in Seattle put it, "We know we will probably lose our jobs, but if we accept these concessions, standards for bakers and other workers will keep going down. We are taking it on the chin for workers all over."