No more Twinkies?

[grammafreddy]

I was listening to late night radio last night - these bakery union workers apparently were getting $20 an hour to start but many of them were getting as much as $40 plus benefits and a hefty pension package. The company was asking for an 8% reduction in wages and I didn't catch what it was for the benefits/pension, if anything. 8% on $20 is $1.60 less an hour which doesn't strike me as too severe if you get to keep your job when jobs are as scarce as hens' teeth - and for the $40 an hour ones, they will have seniority built up which they will lose if they have to start job hunting - so that's gotta be worth something to them, too, if they could keep their jobs. For them 8% less would have been about $3.20 less an hour. $36.80 an hour is still a pretty decent wage, IMO.

The other unions (Teamsters, etc) were willing to go with the reduction and they are pretty upset the bakery union has forced them out of their jobs.

[Roadster]

Makes you wonder why 18,000 people have to be out of work.

When your costs exceed that $2.5 billion in revenue, and the union votes not to work with the company to help bring those costs under control so that the company can live on, 18,500 people have to be out of work.

Then again, I dont know the circumstances on this one but quite often when its that bad its a case of missmanagement and greed so then the union is expected to fix all that? Something has probably been going very wrong upstairs a very long time and people fail to see that. They just blame the economy and the workers, every time cos them management people say it is so. Dont buy the bad union thing every time. The new management ways are about making their buck, even if they have to scream "near bankrupsy" to the governments to get another shot at it so they can do it again. The union and You/me the public is supposed to fix their messes and they laugh their own way to the bank,,, and to nice big vacations, and,,, well you know the story.

[Rwede]

If you think that the managers who have also lost their jobs due to the union's refusal to help keep the company viable are "laughing all the way to the bank", you've got another thing coming. Management has a lot more to lose than the union grunts in a closure, including higher-paying jobs and stock options. The vested interest of the management is far above that of the baker-boys.

[Jonrox]

At the urging of the bankruptcy judge, both sides have agreed to mediation. A deal isn't guaranteed but now that the union realizes how serious the situation is, I think they'll back down. They're supposed to be protecting the best interests of their members and at this point a job with slightly less pay is better than no job at all.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/19/hostess-bankruptcy-hearing-idUSL1E8MJ6FR20121119

[Roadster]

If you think that the managers who have also lost their jobs due to the union's refusal to help keep the company viable are "laughing all the way to the bank", you've got another thing coming. Management has a lot more to lose than the union grunts in a closure, including higher-paying jobs and stock options. The vested interest of the management is far above that of the baker-boys.

I am not sure in this case AS I already said because I havent read the whole thing, but ya, in many cases, you would have another thing coming. Look at all them companies that got government help and then blew it on super big group vacations and passing their higher ups a wealthy leaving bonus and retirement package as IF those people did wonderful work and deserved it while the company fell yet again...
After all them bail outs the stories of missuse were endless. Was a big joke, them dollars didnt go to saving the companies at all, it just allowed the failure management teams to walk out rich after their failures in th first place. Many companies still closed after their rescue money arrived.
Really, look into new management,,, its about a fast buck into the big guy's pocket and he can retire in four years a very wealthy man.
And dont kid yourself, these people who fail a company havent really failed, they walked with huge bonuses and can show that for their next job.

[GrooveTunes]

At the urging of the bankruptcy judge, both sides have agreed to mediation. A deal isn't guaranteed but now that the union realizes how serious the situation is, I think they'll back down. They're supposed to be protecting the best interests of their members and at this point a job with slightly less pay is better than no job at all.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/19/hostess-bankruptcy-hearing-idUSL1E8MJ6FR20121119

The members voted against what the union negotiators recommended. Hopefully they will stick to their guns and close the place down unless the vulture capitalists change their minds. It's time to stop making the employees the scape goat.

[flamingfingers]

It IS time to stop blaming the workers:

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at [email protected], read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

Let's get a few things clear. Hostess didn't fail for any of the reasons you've been fed. It didn't fail because Americans demanded more healthful food than its Twinkies and Ho-Hos snack cakes. It didn't fail because its unions wanted it to die.

It failed because the people that ran it had no idea what they were doing. Every other excuse is just an attempt by the guilty to blame someone else.

Hostess management's efforts to blame union intransigence for the company's collapse persisted right through to the Thanksgiving eve press release announcing Hostess' liquidation, when it cited a nationwide strike by bakery workers that "crippled its operations."

That overlooks the years of union givebacks and management bad faith. Example: Just before declaring bankruptcy for the second time in eight years Jan. 11, Hostess trebled the compensation of then-Chief Executive Brian Driscoll and raised other executives' pay up to twofold. At the same time, the company was demanding lower wages from workers and stiffing employee pension funds of $8 million a month in payment obligations.

The record shows that Hostess' unions were willing to talk with management at virtually every stage to keep the firm alive.

There are plenty of companies and industries in which such talks have been fruitful, including the auto industry. But they can succeed only when everyone is confident that the guys at the other side of the table are committed to the same goals.
In this case, the unions finally realized that the Hostess strategic plan started and ended with extracting yet another round of cutbacks from employees. To argue that capitulating might at least save thousands of jobs is to accept the corrosive mind-set that manufacturing workers should be glad they've got any job at all and take what they're offered.

The union members could see that their supposed management "partners" hoped to rescue their own investments by placing workers on a glide path to life on a minimum-wage existence, without pensions and without healthcare, after they had given and given again. You want to claim that they should have accepted the latest management demands as better than nothing instead of voting it down, OK. But you should ask yourself two questions: Where do you think this trend would have ended, and how much would you take?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-h ... 735.column