Never Forget...

[Sombeech]

How does the company go from the best they ever have to bankrupt by just a simple little clerical oopsie? I'm calling BS on that excerpt. Over-dramatize much?

What probably happened was Payroll saw some numbers and assumed huge raises for everybody and decided to look like the good guys by spreading cheer. Probably had nothing to do with the main operations of the company. Might even be tracked down to one little newbie at the desk showing off their excel skills, and BAM, let's print out some memos.

Just like that article is coming from one person's 13 year old memory of his very first paycheck from the company. Hell maybe he even read the note wrong.

But let's say this was fact and it was a huge story in the news and all that... I'm still not seeing the benefits of Unions in this.

[BruteForce]

I just saw a CBS story that the nail may not yet be pounded into the coffin of Hostess. Seems the union and management may be working things out.

http://www.latimes.com/business/mone...,5350938.story

[Sombeech]

What could they POSSIBLY have to offer? That they will send their employees back to work now after screwing up?

This is what happens when people bitch and moan about a few people making millions, so they want to quit their job. You know who wins? Those people they were bitching about in the first place. You could cry all day about how life isn't fair and there's somebody making a lot more money than they should. Just go to work and do your freaking job so the rest of us can have Twinkies.

The Union tried to teach Hostess a lesson and just got completely owned instead. Unfortunately it's the Union leaders who are still sitting comfortably while all of those workers are still out of a job if this doesn't work out.

[Iceaxe]

[Iceaxe]

[BruteForce]

No idea what you posted here, but my home-based content filtering (need to keep my kids from spanking it via the PRON) is blocking whatever you've posted.

[rockgremlin]

Ya....verrrrry skeptical about the new deal between non-union and union here. If its really so bad that they would go admit to the world's fattest nation that they're no longer able to crank out twinkies and ding dongs then the situation has gotta be FUBAR.

[double moo]

Maybe Hostess is just fine... It's all a distraction from Bengahzigate... At least the media has made it so.

[accadacca]

Damn....


BREAKING: Mediation between Hostess and the bakers union has failed. Hostess says it will move forward with liquidating the company and selling off its assets.

[trackrunner]

found this line interesting that each product from hostess had to be delivered by a separate truck
"They could make them in new facilities not burdened under old worker agreements that, for instance, required employing separate drivers for two different kinds of Hostess products rather than trucking them together."

from nbc news link

[Iceaxe]

One of the better reads I've seen on the subject...

Death of Twinkies: A Union Contract Hit
By Dennis Kneale
Published November 19, 2012
FOXBusiness

In the death of Hostess Brands, progenitor of Twinkies, Devil Dogs and Ding Dongs and other artery-clogging, icing-adorned icons of Americana, plenty of factors get the blame.

Management didn’t cut deep enough, soon enough. Plants didn’t update. Marketing failed to innovate. The product line stayed unstintingly junky, defiantly flouting America’s reluctant reset to low-fat fare.

But the real reason Hostess had to die at this particular time? This was a union contract hit.

And that offers a disturbing glimpse into the delusional, drunk-with-power mindset of unions -- which represent barely 7% of the private work force in the U.S. -- as they embark on a second term of way-too-cozy relations with their supplicant in the White House.

President Obama, ever grateful for the millions of dollars and thousands of foot soldiers provided by union support, will continue trying to end-run Congress and make it easier for unions to sink their hooks into business.

Yet unions are in stark denial of the need for significant cutbacks in their lush contracts if their employers are to survive. This is especially true in the demise of Hostess Brands.

Hostess’s hired gun and CEO, Gregory Rayburn, the workout “cleaner” creditors had brought in to try to save the company, had said repeatedly that he would have to shut it down unless a dozen unions accepted cutbacks in pay, benefits and stupid, featherbedding union work rules.

Even the Teamsters had agreed to his plan. (And those guys “will crack you over the head,” as a union guy warned me many years ago when a strike loomed at the Detroit News and I, a lowly intern, had said I might cross any picket line.)

But the 5,600 workers in the bakers union at Hostess went on strike. The leadership of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers whispered to workers that the company was bluffing, or a white-knight buyer may emerge. Hard to know whether this was blatant deception or foolish miscalculation; I’d suspect a bit of both.

Then Rayburn, somber not swaggering, came on-air with me on “Markets Now” in the noon hour on Thursday and reiterated his threat: The bakers must return to work by 5 p.m. that day, or the company would file to liquidate on Friday.

Rayburn even had a company press release hand-delivered to picketing workers at a dozen plants, warning them of the 5 o’clock ultimatum. He was hoping to separate the members from their kamikaze leadership.

It didn’t work. On Friday, Hostess filed in bankruptcy court to liquidate the company. With extreme prejudice. Today, Rayburn seeks court permission to start selling off pieces.

So now all 18,500 workers at Hostess Brands just lost their jobs. Way to go guys! Bake me a lie, as fast as you can.

Brace yourself for a wave of union propaganda-as-apologia. You’ll hear Obama-echoes of sniping against private equity a la Mitt-Bain Capital: “Romney-Style Economics Behind Decline of Hostess, But Workers Are Paying the Price,” says one website affiliated, predictably, with the AFL-CIO.

Those vulture capitalists must have sucked out hundreds of millions of dollars by leveraging up the company, right? (Answer: wrong. Ripplewood Holdings injected a total $150 million in three dollops as Hostess sank deeper into trouble. It lost every dollar.)

The unions will say management had given itself millions in pay raises while demanding worker cuts. (True, but the raises were barely a rounding error at a company that had lost almost half a billion bucks in two years; and Rayburn rescinded the raises anyway, making the brass work for a dollar a year apiece.)

The unions will blame the company for taking on almost $900 million in debt. (Yet that debt cost Hostess all of $45 million in interest last year, when its total losses swelled up to $340 million).

And here’s what you won't hear the unions ever talk about:

--Hostess paid out almost $100 million in health benefits for retirees last year, but over half of it covered workers who never had worked at Hostess. The Teamsters’ onerous and antiquated “multi-employer pension plan” foists the pension obligations of a bankrupt company on to the balance sheets of surviving rivals—ensuring a steady death spiral in any declining industry. A similar “MEPP” almost killed YRC, one of the largest trucking companies.

--Union rules forced Hostess to run separate truck fleets for delivering bread vs. sweets. A sweets driver, serving a 7-11 store, was forbidden from restocking shelves with breads already delivered and waiting in the back—he had to call for a bread driver to swing by and handle.

--The union restrictions on the 5,500 distribution routes at Hostess made it unprofitable to serve tiny outlets, yet Hostess was barred from using smaller, sleeker—and non-union—distributors.

--Workers were asked to take an 8% pay cut and pay 17% of their health-care costs instead of zero. Welcome to the club, guys. For this, they would have received 25% ownership of Hostess plus $100 million of Hostess debt to be paid back to the unions.

But the bakers wouldn’t budge.

In the months ahead a chop-shop or food giant may resurrect various Hostess brands, but those 36 plants are shuttered, those 18,500 jobs are gone for good. The union preferred to picket while an 85-year-old company suffocated . . . rather than risk having to face inevitable demands for similar concessions at other employers across the country.

Those demands will be forthcoming, anyway, because, as President Obama likes to say in slapping the rich with higher taxes, the math doesn’t work. The only questions are which union will be next, and whether anyone reasonable (or sane) will be listening.

Even a parasite is smart enough to know not to kill its host. In the case of unions, the presence of such preternatural intelligence isn’t yet readily apparent.

[accadacca]

Damn...Maverick.

[accadacca]

Lotta knockoffs out there

[rockgremlin]

Lil' Debbie is rolling in the cash as Americans attempt to fill that enormous void that Hostess created.


Although, I've heard rumors that Hostess might be resurrected within 2-3 months by funding from a prospective buyer.

[JP]

Thank a union

KEY WORD: "...were..."

So true

[Iceaxe]

Although, I've heard rumors that Hostess might be resurrected within 2-3 months by funding from a prospective buyer.

Why would anyone buy Hostess with its current union problems? Better to just let it go into bankruptcy and buy the assets in a couple months at auction without the other headaches, that's what I'd do if I wanted to make Twinkies. You would shed yourself of the Union, pensions, debt load, etc.... This is one of those deals where someone's patience will be handsomely rewarded.

[JP]

Why would anyone buy Hostess with its current union problems?

Oh, you can buy Hostess, the union wouldn't be part of that transaction and have zero input. The union would have to reestablish itself and if let back in by the workers, they will have to start from scratch (no pun intended) with their collective bargaining procedures. I bet the company can make the claim, they can offer its employees more than the union can. Just like the Japanese motor corporations doing business in the U.S.

[Iceaxe]

Oh, you can buy Hostess, the union wouldn't be part of that transaction and have zero input.

I think that would depend on the type of sale? Still probably easier and cheaper to buy the company out of bankruptcy I would think. I've seen it done with a couple of steel fabrication companies. After they are bought some are parted out.

[JP]

I wouldn't think a union's past agreements would have anything to do with new owners. The new owners aren't binded by the contract that they did not settle.

[Iceaxe]

I wouldn't think a union's past agreements would have anything to do with new owners. The new owners aren't binded by the contract that they did not settle.

I don't know.... if you buy a company you buy it's debt and assets... as I said, probably depends, I just don't know enough about this type of stuff.

Now if you are just buying the equipment or the brand, that is different than buying the company.