Hostess To Close; No More Twinkies 674
RenderSeven writes "In a press release issued today, baker Hostess Brands asked a bankruptcy court for permission to close all of its plants and sell off their assets, immediately laying off 18,500 workers. Citing high labor and rising health care costs, increasing competition and growing consumer awareness of healthy foods, Hostess says it can no longer operate without union concessions. A crippling strike has already shut down operations at all facilities, and while the Teamsters Union has ratified a new contract to keep Hostess in business, the Bakers Union has refused saying they would rather see the company closed than accept pension cuts. The Teamsters union is urging the bakers union to hold a secret ballot on whether to continue striking; citing its financial experts who had access to the company's books, the Teamsters say that Hostess' warning of liquidation is 'not an empty threat or a negotiating tactic' but a certain outcome if workers keep striking. If your late-night programming is fueled by Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Zingers, better stock up now."
[Editor's note: A whole bunch of users submitted this news. I worry about our readership's cholesterol levels.]
Zombieland... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
It is a conspiracy. This is, obviously, the first step in zombie world domination.
This explains why they were so hard to find. (Score:3)
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Funny)
Poylsorbate 80
America 0
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In one fell swoop you've shown how ignorant Americans can be. Good show old chap, good show.
Re: (Score:3)
Not to worry:
Just buy up your local food store's supply. They'll stay 'fresh' for centuries!
Believe it or not, Twinkies have an expiration date, and pretty soon, life's little Twinkie gauge is going to go... empty.
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Insightful)
You couldnt even leave the twinkie post free of your BS????
GIVE IT A REST DUDE!
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Funny)
There will always be someone wrong on the internet.
This is an incorrect statement.
One of these things is not like the other (Score:3, Insightful)
This wouldn't have happend if the bakers union had conceeded.
This wouldn't have happend if Hostess had better management.
It doesn't matter if you have the best management in the world, if your workers all at once decide to shut you down.
The workers thought management was bluffing but oddly they really did not have large bags of gold they slept on.
Re:One of these things is not like the other (Score:5, Informative)
The workers thought management was bluffing but oddly they really did not have large bags of gold they slept on.
Some of them did:
"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%."
"Hostess pays Rayburn $125,000 a month, according to court filings. At the same time Rayburn became CEO, Gephardt's son Matthew, 41, the COO of the Gephardt Group, was put on the Hostess board as a $100,000-a-year independent director"
Source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/26/hostess-twinkies-bankrupt/ [cnn.com]
And this was going on last year at the same time that the company was headed into bankruptcy again and management was asking for even more deep concessions from workers. From this and other things I have read, I get the impression that Hostess is a typical large company dealing with typical liability and productivity problems that couldn't manage through it.
Re: (Score:3)
And if those people worked for free, it would have covered what, 30 yearly salaries of union workers without benefits? Lets pad it a bit and say 60 worker's salaries. 60 out of 18,000- A nice bitching point when your mad, but a pretty pointless point to complain about what someone else is making for a living when the scale is so huge.
No, it's not just the gross numbers and how much the raises would cost the company in dollars, but also in morale. Do you think the workers morale and trust in the company improved when they found out high level executives were getting raises while their pay was being cut? Even if they have minimal fiscal impact, they have symbolic impact that affects the outcome of worker actions.
then what did mangement do... (Score:3)
Re:Squeezing the supply (Score:4, Insightful)
Hostess has recently had some of the highest priced snack cakes in the supermarket. Their sales have fallen off. There is competition in the free market. The union wanted a bigger slice of pie from a smaller pie. The company knew it couldn't survive a labor strike. The union was not recognizing the situation. The company cut the losses instead of bleeding to death and is putting the assets on the market.
Fast forward to the new soak the rich plan Obama has for what 1.6 Trillion Dollars? The pie they plan on bleeding will rapidly vanish. The high income folks will no longer make high income here with the high overhead. Businesses will shutter and the capitol will rapidly move to more friendly to business markets.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/share-this-massive-list-of-post-election-firings-and-layoffs-with-everyone-you-can [theeconomi...seblog.com]
Is your employeer leaving town? Why would they stay. Those dependant on the government will stay and sign up for all the bailouts and handouts they can get. Those stuck with the skyrocketing bill will move assets elsewhere.
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If the friggin' teamsters union looked at the books and said "hey guys, this has to happen" (which they did), I seriously doubt that this is as simple as greedy management is sticking up the middle finger to the employees.
In the present situation, it seems that without concessions from the bakers' union that other unions have already observed to be necessary, there will be no twinkies and 18,000 fewer job pretty soon.
I get it. The bakers' union is fighting for the rights of their members, and thinks this
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, last time the same union agreed to a benefits cut, Hostess then welched on their word and went back into Chapter 11 hearings anyways...
http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/why-didnt-hostess-workers-believe-the-threats/2012/11/16/0638138e-302f-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Zombieland... (Score:5, Informative)
Or a long series of unions taking a bigger and bigger piece of the pie till not enough was left to run the business on.
Your point of view is directly contradicted by reality, as the average American wage has stayed mostly flat since the late 60s and union membership has never been lower.
The claim that if unions went away today those laws would go away is totally wrong. That is what many people think. If unions would go away, companies would force their workers to work 20 hours a day 7 days a week for 30 hours of pay at a really low rate. Their pensions would go away. That is not going to happen. Unions keep on repeating this to get people to vote the union way.
The economy has grown in leaps and bounds since [arbitrary date], the stock market is higher than ever, unions are weaker than ever,
pensions are almost entirely nonexistent, and out of all that wealth... workers have been paid just enough to keep up with inflation.
Oh yea, worker productivity has almost doubled over the same period of time and black lung is making a comeback in amongst coal miners.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and it ain't the unions.
Union BS (Score:3)
Non-governmental unions are weaker because the industries that they took over no longer exist or are a shadow of what they used to be. The cruise ship industry was mandated by a Democratic congress to be unionized and disappeared virtually overnight. Sure, there are still Americans working cruise liners, but they are all foreign owned.
My Grandfather worked his way into management of a steel mill. He used to tell me stories of unionized mobs lynching scabs and harrasing the families of management. It
American Cruise Ships (Score:3)
Ask yourself why there are no American cruise lines and then go look up the real cause. Unions are a 20th century artifact and no longer serve any purpose except to milk the remaining drops out of a dying cow. Every unionized industry not dependent on public support is either disappearing or already dead. Argue all you want about the noble cause of unions, but this story and a thousand others illustrate the opposite.
It is going to be a long 4 years for a lot of people, not all of whom really deserve i
Re: (Score:3)
Run on Twinkies? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't Reddit. Slashdot users have no comradery or instinct to join together to achieve goals.
Re:Run on Twinkies? (Score:5, Interesting)
The first result in Google for camradery is http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comradery [merriam-webster.com]. The first definition is camaraderie, so it looks like we have two valid spellings of the same word.
It's also currently in the top 1% of lookups on the site, so the slashdot effect is still alive and well.
Re:Run on Twinkies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Run on Twinkies? (Score:5, Funny)
Or bail them out [whitehouse.gov]?
We must bail them out.
They are too tasty to fail.
Re: (Score:3)
Heck, France blocked Pepsi buying Yopiat (yogurt) because of “national interest”. I would argue that Twinkies are more American then yogurt is French.
WTF!?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about unexpected events! I would expect the investment to be rolling in with the recent wins for pot legalization. I mean, isn't that the old joke? If pot were ever legalized, Hostess would clean up?
What will the people of colorado do?
Re:WTF!?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
They'll eat carrot sticks and like it!
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Import from Canada. Sapurto will be happy to provide you with your Hostess-brand nutritionally deficient snack foods. They don't currently make Twinkies, but I suspect they may start to do so in the near future.
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It's silly because everyone has already stockpiled 2000 years of twinkies... OBVIOUSLY.
GO UNIONS! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not.
I wonder what these idiots were thinking.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably that the people at the top were getting raises in the millions of dollars while the "idiots" were having pay cuts thrust on them?
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
The union striked, the company folded. That sucks. But the real failure here is with management. All this didn't happen over night. They've been headed here for a long time. And with...what... SEVEN CEO's in the last decade? Do you really think anyone has been steering the boat?
Hey, sometimes companies fail. But when that line on the chart starts to encroach on the bottom line it shouldn't be just the workers that take the brunt of the hardship to keep it all afloat. Of course, when you ask a professional like a CEO to take a pay cut, they simply leave (with a bonus) and you have to hire another one. And so you have a death spiral as a procession of CEO fuck shit up. Heaven forbid we get a blue collar guy leading the company.
Hostess also had the problem that they were a declining company that still had the burden of a larger company's pension plan. There's no good solution to that. The pension system doesn't work so well when the size of the company grows and shrinks.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Chastising the CEO for having a contract that is overpriced while support a union contract that is overpriced is a bit hypocritical.
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You know how people complain about the welfare queens that learn how to work the system? Jumping from job to job just long enough to collect unemployment. They're bad employees but not bad enough to get canned until they qualify for the benies. Those people are ba
Do the workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Hum...according to a quick search, the CEO make $2.5 million/year, and, most of the rest of the upper level management folks are making between $700,000 and $900,00. While that might not keep the company doors open, it would certainly help give the many, near-minimum wage employees a larger separation bonus.
The fact that management was asking for an 8% pay cut, and a 17% increase in employee contributions to the health plan costs had to hurt most of the workers.
Re: (Score:3)
If the Teamsters think your union is doing something stupid, it just might be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not benefit them, but they STILL MAKE 7-figure salaries, even when they perform dismally poorly.
So if one regards millions of dollars as sufficient, it really doesn't matter WHAT they do. They could (if they wanted to) simply use their job to carry out a bunch of personal vendettas, or political aims (like utterly destroying a local union). Especially if they don't feel like there is much of a chance to meet a specific performance bonus target, due to long-term structural or economic problems, there seems little incentive for them not to just shrug and move on.
Now this CEO has a reputation as a Union-buster and is likely to be hired again by a company seeking to prevent unions from having control, even if he did nothing his entire tenure but thumb his nose at the unions. Unions at companies he runs in the future will be forced to respect him because he's clearly willing to sack the whole company, close hundreds of facilities and put entire towns into recession to prove a point about corporate economics.
meh... CEOs are totally treated fairly... heh
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Destroying a company never benefits executives.
How does shit like this get modded up? Does no one remember SCO? Does "private equity" mean nothing to you? There are plenty of ways that executives can profit by pillaging the companies they are supposed to manage.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize folks are in a panic over losing Twinkies and Wonder Bread, but just take in for a moment the following tidbit of information: Hostess Executives provided themselves 70% raises last year. Today they announce they're closing the company because their rank-and-file workers refused to take an 8% pay cut. Consider who will be hurt by closing the company. (Hint: it won't be the executives.)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'll agree that unions can be quite a thorn in the side of effective business (they once had a lot of benefit, these days though, they seem more of a lamprey), when the company says this...
I have to question if they could have stayed in business anyway. If you can't figure out "Hm... people want healthy food, maybe I should make healthy food" or deal with competition in a mostly capitalistic environment, then you probably shouldn't be in business.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:4, Insightful)
What it comes down to, is you're both right.
Executive pay has gone fucking apeshit in comparison to worker pay. Its fucking pathetic. BUT...executive pay is NOT really a reason why companies fail. In the overall scheme of things, it amounts to dick/year in expenses.
BUT - if management was expecting everyone to eat a 20% pay cut, they should eat the same dick too.
That said, Hostess is a clusterfuck of a company. Their sales are shit, AND they were pillaged by a pair of VC firms to the tune of somewhere around $700 Million. That asspile of debt IS a contributing factor, although bluntly nobody is really buying that processed shit anymore either.
The union...well, their blame is they ended up with 0% of their original pay instead of 80% of it. I can't say I blame the staff for not wanting to take a pay cut, but I'd also rather have a job.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Informative)
It's much more than just "a cut"
http://socialistworker.org/2012/11/15/hostess-workers-draw-a-line [socialistworker.org]
So what they get now is MUCH better (Score:3, Insightful)
-- An immediate 100% percent wage cut.
-- Shifting 500% percent more of health care costs onto the workers (for some workers, this would mean an increased cost of $4000 a month or more for medical insurance).
-- Eliminating retiree Medigap insurance, which covers gaps in Medicare.
-- Eliminating Pension altogether
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It's not like the union was unwilling to comp
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Dude, get a grip. Would you hire back the same stubborn idiots that let the previous incarnation of the company FAIL in the 1st place?? Who's to say they wouldn't do the same to you?
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You're talking about management here, right? They're the ones who let things get so bad a strike would sink the company.
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They could have stayed in business by cutting costs because their product wasn't as in demand. But just like our wonderful country's population, the bakers union would rather lose everything that take a cut.
Maybe they shouldn't take a cut.
I don't think -any- company is worth sacrificing your family's well being just to keep it afloat, especially if the guys at the top aren't willing to sharply cut their own salaries and bonuses. If the only way to keep a company alive is to give subsistence-or-worse wages and no benefits, then that company shouldn't exist.
You seem to be under the assumption that the factory workers were living large and can afford to take a big cut.
Hostess couldn't change with the times. They
Re: (Score:3)
They had no intention of staying in business. Wall Street entities that were planning on selling Hostess as scrap decided they'd try to milk some PR out of the whole process.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Informative)
I have to question if they could have stayed in business anyway. If you can't figure out "Hm... people want healthy food, maybe I should make healthy food" or deal with competition in a mostly capitalistic environment, then you probably shouldn't be in business.
If they were less profitable than in the past then there would have been changes they could have made, like laying off a percent of their workforce or closing several factories or bakeries. It sounds like the unions didn't want them to do that, though. So they went back and proposed an 8% wage cut for the workers that would gradually scale back up, and the bakers union went on strike. So now they don't get anything. The people running the business will turn out fine though, they will sell the various brands to someone else and give themselves a nice going-away present, while the unions probably won't get anything (which I'm actually fine with).
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what these idiots were thinking.
They were thinking they would rather work with a new company who has a product consumers want to buy instead of going down with a sinking ship that would bleed them dry on the way down.
If hostess can't properly market and sell products then they should go bankrupt.
I've seen this happen numerous times: a company starts doing poorly, they ask their employees to take cuts. The employees take cuts. The company keeps doing worse, the employees even sometimes start working for free "don't worry we'll turn this around soon." A few months later the company declares bankruptcy and everybody gets fired anyway and the company refuses back pay.
Hostess could have sold to another company which wanted to buy them but they said no. As the article mentions, Pringles was doing poorly, it sold off and now it's incredibly successful because it got new management and marketing.
I haven't eaten a hostess product in years. When I think hostess I think truck stop 10 year old Styrofoam. I can't remember the last time I saw someone eat a Hostess product. Cutting wages isn't going to help. The sooner its property and assets are sold off to someone who can either reinvigorate the brand or put its kitchens to better use the better imo.
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>> I wonder what these idiots were thinking.
> They were thinking they would rather work with a new company who has a product consumers want to buy instead of going down with a sinking ship that would bleed them dry on the way down.
Then why not quit and go work for another company?
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Because they collectivly, the union, work at THESE plants/factories/bakeries? (do they bake twinkies? I thought they were just extruded). Unless you want them to organize some sort of mass exoduse, the bakers union serves the people working at the bakery. Killing the old boss to get a new boss IS how they go work for another company.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Informative)
You're just totally wrong on the facts.
All the unions had already made significant concessions in the two prior bankruptcies. No one was asking for more. They'd all taken wage, pension and benefit cuts repeatedly, and management couldn't do anything except give themselves raises.
If you were in that union, you'd have already had two haircuts and been asked for a third. How many times would you let the company bend you over before you said "enough?"
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:4, Informative)
They were probably also thinking of the 300% pay raise that the CEO gave himself while preparing for bankruptcy, along with the lesser raises other executives got at the same time.
I'm still not convinced this was a smart move on the part of the Union, but I can certainly understand what they were thinking!
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still not convinced this was a smart move on the part of the Union, but I can certainly understand what they were thinking!
Management and their crony lawyers could have given up their entire salary and worked pro-bono all year, and it *still* wouldn't have been enough to bring the company out of the red. Employee salaries and pensions, however, are probably at *least* a billion dollars per year (if it's only a third of revenue, which I would guess is on the low end). So making cuts to salaries/pensions would actually do something.
Your article doesn't have total amounts, but let's be generous and say that management gave themselves and their crony lawyers an extra $10 million per year. Sure, it's an insult and a slap in the face, but it's not enough to really impact the bottom line significantly.
If $10 million in management excess is the reason the union employees voted the way they did, then they cut off their nose to spite their face.
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Management and their crony lawyers could have given up their entire salary and worked pro-bono all year, and it *still* wouldn't have been enough to bring the company out of the red.
That might be so, but it would have at least shown that management's priorities were in the right place -- trying to take care of their people and their business instead of just lining their wallets.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They were thinking that they don't care if they kill a company, because making any concessions at all means that they're in a weaker bargaining position with any other companies.
The lesson is clear: if you want to run a business, do it in a right-to-work state, or offshore. Hostess would probably be doing fine if they'd moved all production to Mexico ten years ago and trucked the product in.
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The point of striking unions is to twist the arm of the company. Well, in this case, the arm broke off and now none of them will have jobs. The CEO is out of a job, too, after all.
How does the story about the Golden Goose go again?
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
How does the story about the Golden Goose go again?
you mean the one where the bosses get the gold and you get goosed?
that one?
many of us know THAT one pretty well.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Informative)
They were going to be out of a job anyway, so accepting further cuts would just trap them further in wage slavery; then when the axe did fall, their hourly rate would be even lower for when they applied for unemployment. Hostess has been in bankruptcy twice in the last couple years.
Hostess followed the Bain model: private investors load it with debt, taking that money out in fees to themselves; force workers to make crippling concessions so they can take more fees out; liquidate the company to suck the corpse dry.
The Baker's Union decided not to cooperate in their own rape. The surprise here is that the Teamsters rolled over and said "you'll like it better if you can't hear me whimpering because I'm facing away from you."
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Funny)
...liquidate the company to suck the corpse dry.
...The Baker's Union decided not to cooperate in their own rape. The surprise here is that the Teamsters rolled over and said "you'll like it better if you can't hear me whimpering because I'm facing away from you."
Not a comment on the accuracy or viewpoint of your post, but instead of 'corpse' and 'rape' analogies; wouldn't it be more appropriate to say, "...sucked the creamy cash filling out of the company..." or "...stuffed the unwilling Teamsters with dark chocolaty pudding..."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the entire executive board of Ford Motor Co. forfeited all of their salaries and bonuses and stock options for 1 year, they could raise every single Ford employee's salary by 18 cents per year (which is to say zero, because nobody would get a 1/3 penny per paycheck salary boost). I wonder how that works for Hostess with 18,500 workers... $3.5-$4 million seems to be roughly the previous (high-dollar) CEO's total compensation but it was lowered for the new guy in March 2012 ... so if the CEO took zero com
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Insightful)
so if the CEO took zero compensation, he could pay everyone $216.21 more per year, or $8.31 per pay check, 10.3 cents more per hour.
I haven't run your numbers, but even if you're correct, assuming that the workers are just making it on current pay checks (probably not) then $216 per year means that the kids can have a Christmas, or you can go to the movies once in a while, or eat pizza or something "luxurious".
If Hostess was being run as a viable business, instead of being bleed dry by the current owners, there would be money to pay the employees reasonably. It's not the unions, it's the leeches.
You have the same whining going on at Papa John's where the CEO John Schnatter claims that to "Obamacare" forcing him actually to treat his employees reasonably and provide health insurance will cost $5 to $8 million for insuring more workers would mean 10 to 14 cents a pizza. Assuming that's true, then Schnatter's $2.7 million compensation package personally accounts for about 5 cents per pizza.
It's not really an issue of money, it's a matter of control. The bosses piss on the workers and that's "free market". The workers organize to try and get some respect and a living wage, that a slave revolt.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:5, Informative)
The CEO, Greg Rayburn, cut his and the three other top executives salary cut to $1 this year. How much more of a concession do you want?
As for the private equity firm, Ripplewood Holdings is going to lose most, if not all of the $170 million investment it made in Hostess.
Re:GO UNIONS! (Score:4, Informative)
they already declared bankruptcy. They had a judge give them permission under chapter 11 to impose changes to the contracts. Some of the laborers thought that this was a bluff, where the management was actually in good faith when they said they couldnt afford to live through a strike.
Post-apocalypse... (Score:5, Funny)
Twinkies are already pretty valuable in the post apocalyptic world.
Now they're rare too? Who needs gold when you got a twinkie warehouse!
Re:Post-apocalypse... (Score:4, Funny)
Twinkies are already pretty valuable in the post apocalyptic world. Now they're rare too? Who needs gold when you got a twinkie warehouse!
That was my first thought too. I wonder if they'll sell off the twinkie MFG recipe / process. Be great if they would open source it. As a DIY guy, I've made my own twinkies, but they wouldn't last for 50+ years...
I've found an alternative by accident: I "lost" a half eaten loaf of bread behind the stove. I recovered it a year later. While most breads will mold once exposed to air (or even without being exposed), HEB's store-brand bread did not mold. Not Even Mold will eat this stuff! I know what I'm making my Zombie Slaying Helmet out of...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And... (Score:4, Interesting)
They have a lot of bakery outlet shops,where you can buy these brands of baked goods for next to nothing about a week before their expiration date. When I first became aware of them I was a little surprised by the name ("Really? Someone in marketing thought this was a good name for a company that makes bread and cookies?"), but it turns out the word does not have the offensive connotation in Spanish that it does in English. from Wikipedia:
The name "Bimbo" has no specific meaning in Spanish; thus, the name has not caused significant uproar as it would in the United States, where the word "bimbo" has a negative connotation. The official theory believes that the name Bimbo, coined in 1945 when the company was rebranded from its previous name, Super Pan S.A., is the mixing of the words "bingo" and "Bambi".[4] In addition, the innocent, childlike name went well with the brand image they wanted to build.
Re:And... (Score:4, Funny)
They also make Airheads candy and Sleeping-With-The-Boss sodas.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, Airheads are made by Perfetti Van Melle [wikipedia.org]
Good riddens (Score:3, Funny)
While I have some nostalgia over Twinkies, the fact remains the stuff is utter garbage.
Honestly, this stuff makes other junk food like Cheetos and Pop Tarts look healthy in comparison.
When Hostess closes.. (Score:3)
Re:When Hostess closes.. (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't matter either way petteyg. The pensions were dead anyway. They were utterly unaffordable and had already hit the cutting room floor. At this point it was either "save your job and get a 401k" or "lose your job and get jack squat". The Baker's unions chose jack squat for themselves and the other 18000 employees and management at Hostess.
As an example of how bad it was there, the Teamsters Union, probably one of the strongest Unions in the US took the deal Hostess offered them, which was the same as they offered the Bakers union.
The bakers union refused to face reality, and 5000 people in a union sunk a multi-billion dollar company and put 18000 other people out of work.
Who's the effing dimwit now?
And nothing was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
When people learn about junk like healthy eating, companies like Hostess need to either reform or get replaced. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with a company being replaced.
I want to be clear that I don't dislike Hostess, but it appears that they have served their purpose.
Re: (Score:3)
Well that, and I looked at the store snack section last night, and the Hostess products are twice the price of other options available. So, if you want a Twinkie fix and the store brand is just as good (I don't know if that's the case, I don't eat Twinkies) why pay more especially with the economy being so bad right now? Same with the fruit pies, Ho-Ho's et al.
Union logic? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's this kind of attitude of unions in the US which makes me say most have outlived their usefulness and something I had to explain when I lived in Germany to the Europeans that the union in the US are nothing like the unions in Europe. Many of the unions in the US are basically racketeers with a bully complex. In Europe if jobs had to be lost, usually the Union would step in and help provide those members with job training to find a new job. If that's what unions did in the US, I'd probably be more supportive.
What union really thinks that it's better for a company to go out of business and everyone in the union lose their job than to try and save as many as possible? Because a union worker making $0 isn't contributing any dues.
When the hostess brand gets bought, do the unions think the new owners are going to do? Maybe they'll keep the old benefits, but only hire back half the workers.
Re:Union logic? (Score:4, Insightful)
I sense a disturbance.... (Score:3)
It's as if 90,000,000 fat sweaty nerds all cried out at once..... and are still whining.....
Victory! (Score:4, Funny)
Hostess has been a major arms dealer in the war against diabetes in the US. It's great to see them finally fail.
Next up: McDonalds? Dare we dream?
The US gov't should be heavily taxing food this unhealthy or subsidizing food that is healthy. Neither of these is happening, and it's fucking ridiculous.
Re:Victory! (Score:5, Insightful)
People in America once dreamed of the liberty to do as they damn well pleased.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, maybe McDonald's will continue to evolve their menu (chicken, salads, and real fruit smoothies for example) to meet their customers' demands.
Ronald is no clown.
Can't make money? (Score:3)
I fear for what this world has become is a company is so inept that it can't make money selling fat, lard, and chocolate to Americans...
After a WHOLE week? (Score:5, Informative)
What company has to close if workers are on strike for a WHOLE WEEK? The company doesn't have to pay hourly workers who don't show up to work...
This looks to me like a corporate version of "suicide by cop"--run your company into the ground (6 CEOs in 10 years, many executives getting big raises, company owned by hedge funds and venture capitalists, company has big debt), and then keep cutting workers pay until they have to say "enough". And then blame the unions.
If you're a company, which is failing and cannot be saved, and you have union workers, how else do you expect the company to finally close up shop? This is what it looks like--try to blame the unions.
The union says they already had half their members laid off, have already cut their pay to below industry average, etc. The union website before the strike started said the following (see http://bctgm.org/PDFs/HostessFactSheet.pdf [bctgm.org]):
Hostess is not and will not be viable: If Hostess emerges from bankruptcy under its present plan,
it will still have too much debt, too high costs and not enough access to cash to stay in business for
the long term. It will not be able to invest in its plants, in new products and in new technology.
---
I hope someone buys Drake's.
Re:Right... (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, I've been on the receiving end of a pay cut before and it sucks. But, it was better for me at that time to have a pay cut and search for another job than to have gone entirely without a paycheck. As much as it would've hurt financially the bakers should've seen reason. 90% of a paycheck is definitely better than no paycheck.
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes I think pensions should be banned. Or, they should be placed in escrowed accounts and be purely defined contribution.
The problem with your logic is that you KNEW there wouldn't be a pension so you negotiated a salary accordingly. That is vastly different than accepting a lower salary in the expectation of receiving a nice pension. Since most defined-benefit pension plans use a formula that amounts to workers putting in time for 20 years and then accruing all their benefits in the last 10 or so,
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It creates a market vacuum and a cheap labor influx. Now another company can fill in the diminished market Hostess is out of, with a smaller operation that's not so expensive and lumbering and more fitted to market forces. These employees can get non-union jobs where they'll be offered more than they were making but less than their prior wages, which were garnered for union dues (i.e. $19/hr minus $5/hr = $14/hr, you get $16/hr instead which is $2/hr more), which thus lowers the economic waste spent in wa
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Informative)
it wasn't Hostess management that did this. it was the Baker's Union. Hostess was in the midst of a managed reorganization to try and save it. Even the Teamsters union was going along with Hostess because they could see that it was this or no more jobs.
The Baker's Union (and possibly you as well) is living in a Marxist fantasy land where behind every "evil proletariat oppressing capitalist" is an endless pile of money that he just won't share. Back in reality the money was gone and it was this, or liquidation. The Baker's union chose liquidation. Not just for themselves (about 5000 people) but for the OTHER 18000 employees (including Management) too! Don't blame management for something they didn't cause.
Hostess will now be entering a court-ordered liquidation, and the brand rights will (if fate has a sense of humor) be sold to a non-union company in a right-to-work state. As it should be.
OH THE HUMANITY (Score:3)
I made this pic when I heard the news today:
https://i.minus.com/jbbRIi8sgiGgHs.jpg [minus.com]
Re: (Score:3)
And if I understand bankruptcy right, the purchaser could buy the assets, and then hire on who he wants to run them without any union at all. This is the classic instance of the union being so stubborn it's willing to kill the company, lose people their jobs, and lose even its own union dues.
Re:Hostess: A case for bankruptcy & RTW reform (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason Hostess decided to close is to use bankruptcy law to attack the unions - and replace them with employer-supported unions such as contract workers from staffing agencies. This usually comes from companies based out of the South where workers are to "know their place" and businesses are to not be questioned.
Get rid of the provision that voids union contracts on bankruptcy and make Right to Work apply to contractors and part-time labor.
I was under the impression that Hostess were out of money, no longer profitable, and could no longer afford to pay the earlier negotiated wages and benefits. So you're suggesting that Hostess was doing just fine, but the whole bankruptcy was just a conspiracy to screw the unions?
Please tell me if I understand what you're saying: Hostess did not offer ALL of their employees a package that would allow them to get credit from the bank and continue operations, without laying off their entire workforce? Hostess didn't offer a package that their (larger-than-the-baker's-union) Teamster union agreed upon? If they had plenty of money and were still profitable, how would a bankruptcy court (and their auditors) grant them the status of chapter 11? Chapter 7? Or...in the case of a legitimate Chapter 7 bankruptcy, how can Hostess replace their former union workers with contract workers from staffing agencies when they are no longer in business?
I think that we may have different understandings of how bankruptcy works. They are liquidating - Hostess is no longer a company. Their assets (e.g. brands, recipes, factories) will be sold to pay off their debt. This will be overseen by the courts - and Hostess' creditors will likely be paid back a fraction of what they are owed. The private shareholders will be the last to get paid out of the liquidation, and it is very likely that they will get nothing. Am I wrong about this?
If we have such different understandings of how bankruptcy works, I'm not sure that we will agree on how (or if) it should be reformed. I suggest reading [wikipedia.org] up on [wikipedia.org] bankruptcy [wikipedia.org]. If we're talking about the same thing, it will be easier to have an informed discussion.
Re: (Score:3)
Ironic that this was announced earlier today:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/retailer-circuit-citys-website-17726152 [go.com]
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Example: McDonalds got rid of the supersize and added salads, it's totally healthier now. Don't go actually looking at the nutritional facts of those salads, it's salad so it has to be good for you right? Do you want extra dressing with that? Pair it with a Diet Coke and you're practically Richard Simmons!