http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/26/hostess-twinkies-bankrupt/
Unions kill off another company
By zzyzzx Follow Sat, 11 Aug 2012, 3:20pm 790 views 14 comments
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Boca Raton, FL
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This whole problem could be solved by tying the executives and managers salaries to the median salary of the producers (workers). Do that and the execs won't screw the producers and the producers won't strike. The execs still have a profit motive to guarantee efficiency, and the workers have a profit motive to produce as many Twinkies as efficiently as possible.
Of course, that means the execs can't act like parasites sucking 80% of the producer's wealth production while sitting on their fat asses. But that's the price of an efficient economy. No one gets a free ride.
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El Cerrito, CA
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The USA worked just fine when we were taxing away absurd executive compensation. No point in stealing when you have to give it all to the IRS. Come to think of it, no one could afford to bribe the politicians back then. Think there might be a connection?
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Buffalo, NY
taxee says
We can't do that any more due to globalization, at least not withiout nuking half the Caribean and islands surrounding Great Britan into lifeless, radioactive pits.
Bringing executive pay closer to worker pay is the best bet. Most competing nations do it already through law, so there would be fewer alternatives for CEO's to go abroad and you could sell it to the super-rich, as many of them see the CEO's as well-dressed peons, not peers.
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Ruki says
I hate to break this to you, but managers are already mediocre at best, and more typically, they sabotage companies for their own personal benefit.
Managers will fire any employee under their command who does his job too well, is too innovative, and otherwise looks like he would make a better manager than his manager.
That's office politics. That's reality. The current compensation system sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls.
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elliemae's website
One of the problems with hostess is that they haven't changed their recipes or introduced new products in years. Their food is horrible and there are many other options out there.
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Dan8267 says
Exactly. It's not about building up the business, it's about extracting as much as possible.
Notice that when a company like Delphi goes bankrupt or is being deliberately broken down, the execs and management always get golden parachutes; Million Dollar packages - while the employees' pensions get dumped on the taxpayer, paying out 1/3 of what was promised.
Toyota pays it's execs a fraction of what GM or Ford execs make, and Toyota cleans both of their clocks in market share, consumer loyalty, quality, profit margins, and just about every metric.
Frankly we need to adjust the bankruptcy law so that pensions are considered wages and compensation, ahead of debt holders and just below taxes. After all, many people pick jobs for the benefits.
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Madison, WI
This is so typical for corporations of today. At the end of this is a 75 million dollar loan at 15% interest, I hear a sucking sound..
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El Cerrito, CA
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The way it works now is top management gets to keep most of what they pay themselves thanks to the lack of taxes. No more working twenty or thirty years building a company before they can retire. It took them less than five years to strip and bankrupt the company I worked at. A seventy-five year old family run business, world class, sold to investors and reduced to a piece of crap in no time while the so called 'management' got payed millions.
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Ruki says
And just how good a management team do you need to run a company like Hostess? We're not talking Intel or Oracle here.
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@Dan8267
>I hate to break this to you, but managers are already mediocre at best, and more typically, they sabotage companies for their own personal benefit.
I double agree.
@Ruki
>>Sure, but then Hostess would either get mediocre managers/executives or have trouble finding any at all.
This myth, although still believed by millions of Americans, has been around since before the Koch Brothers spent millions on disseminating much false information.
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@thunderlips11
>Toyota pays it's execs a fraction of what GM or Ford execs make, and Toyota cleans both of their clocks in market share, consumer loyalty, quality, profit margins, and just about every metric.
You can say that again!
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I don't eat their products.
No way it could be poor management.LOL
It's not about union vs non-union. How many bankruptcies have there been in right to work states?
Screw all workers? I wonder if it's about the bottom line or the salaries & bonuses of management.
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elliemae says
I remember the first time I had a twinkie was at a friends house when I was about 10. My mom never bought those, but I guess I convinced her to get hohos a few times. I thought yummy,....
Now I can't eat any of those. The partially hydrogenated whatever it is grosses me out. I do think it's kind of cool that the stuff has an infinite shelf life.
That describes it well. "This could be five years old and it would taste the same as it does now."
Maybe my taste just became more sophisticated. You know, with that commie hippy so called natural food. Or maybe I just learned to tell the difference. The synthetic gross stuff was fun there for a few years. Truth is I don't have a rock gut child's stomach that can even handle that crap now. Really, it would make me feel like crap.
But then, I can handle whiskey now. Go figure.
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Saint George, UT
elliemae's website
Marcus, I can't eat twinkies & hostess cupcakes but I can eat zingers if I take small bites. Not exactly a great advertisement for the product.
They simply don't taste like food. And I'm willing to bet that, if left out, they're so full of preservatives they'll never mold.