invite response« First « Previous Comments 58 - 67 of 67 Search these comments
Goran_K
2013 Jul 18, 2:14am
Captain, along with Apocalypse provide some daily gems that I appreciate, and treasure.
indigenous
2013 Jul 19, 7:13am
That there is a beautiful thing and how it should work, can you imagine what that chart would look like for various government agencies?
zzyzzx
2014 Aug 22, 12:29am
Looks like the Unions did return, for a short period of time, and with the expected results:
http://news.yahoo.com/hostess-closing-bakery-created-twinkie-154955144.html
Hostess closing bakery that created the Twinkie
CHICAGO (AP) -- Hostess Brands plans to close the suburban Chicago bakery where the Twinkie was invented in 1930, cutting 400 jobs and shuttering a piece of American baking history.
The company said Wednesday it plans to close the Schiller Park bakery in October.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times (http://bit.ly/1kXZNLh ), Hostess Brands CEO Bill Toler said the company is closing the plant as it tries to improve efficiency.
"While the old Hostess company was in bankruptcy, many competitors took over the shelves and are tenaciously defending their business and thus we must be highly efficient and technologically advanced to compete," he said.
Hostess filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
The plant's employees were stunned by the news, Donald Woods said. He is president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 1.
"They were working like 12 hours, six days a week, and they were looking for this plant to be a part of their future," he said, adding that the workers voted in May to rejoin the union. They had been told the company planned to keep the plant open long term, he said.
The bakery had just reopened a little over a year ago as Twinkies returned to store shelves after Hostess' bankruptcy.
The spongy, cream-filled snack cake was invented in Schiller Park in 1930 by a bakery manager looking for uses for idle shortcake pans.
Tenpoundbass
2014 Aug 22, 12:33am
I'm just glad Hostess cakes are back.
Don't forget to flush and light a match
HydroCabron
2014 Aug 22, 12:59am
1) $87 million in needless costs due to management missteps/corruption
2) $36 million in gratuitous management and CEO compensation
3) $40 million in unnecessary labor costs due to union rules
The answer is clear: the unions ran the company into the ground!
zzyzzx
2014 Aug 22, 1:21am
11 factories at 50% capacity.
and the execs had no say in this?
Or did they purposely run the company like this so it would fail?
Probably due to union contract.
tatupu70
2014 Aug 22, 1:27am
Probably due to union contract.
You crack me up. Do you really believe what you're posting?
HydroCabron
2014 Aug 22, 1:32am
Does Hostess have a voluntary market share? Are there people who choose of their own free will to consume Hostess products?
I once bit into a Twinkie - did not finish.
Is there a market other than Gitmo and other U.S. conservative/small-gummint torture-and-beating installations?
It might be nice to have Hostess products to bite down on while being waterboarded, provided you spit them out afterwards.
« First « Previous Comments 58 - 67 of 67 Search these comments
http://gma.yahoo.com/twinkies-return-hostess-unions-wont-030833930--abc-news-money.html
Twinkies Return, Hostess Unions Won't
he bankrupt assets of Hostess Brands, Inc., the company responsible for Twinkies, Ho Ho's, Sno Balls and Ding Dongs, are being put back to work by a buyout firm. What's not being put back to work are the former Hostess unionized employees.
The unionized workers had been on strike when the company folded late last year.
The company had imposed a contract that would cut its 19,000 workers' wages — 15,000 of whom belonged to the workers from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) — by 8 percent. (The Teamsters was Hostess' largest union, followed by BCTGM.) The contract would have also cut benefits by 27 to 32 percent.
Hostess filed for Chapter 11 in January 2012. In November 2012, the company announced it would be shutting its doors for good. By that time, it had lost about $1.1 billion, largely due to bankruptcy filings.
But last month Apollo Global Management, LLC, and Metropoulos & Co., which owns Pabst Blue Ribbon and Vlasic pickles, bought the 83-year-old company for $410 million, renaming it Hostess Brands LLC. It is planning to re-open four bakeries over the next two and a half months, in Columbus, Ga.; Emporia, Kan.; Schiller Park, Ill.; and Indianapolis. It is also contemplating a fifth in Los Angeles.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, C. Dean Metropoulos, the company's chief executive, said that between now and September, he plans to inject $60 million in capital investments into the plants, and hopes to hire at least 1,500 workers.
But those workers won't be unionized.
"It appears that they are discharging the union contract in bankruptcy," said Matthew A. Kaufman, a labor attorney in Los Angeles who is not affiliated with the case.
While Metropoulos did not respond to interview requests from ABC News, he told the Journal that he does "not expect to be involved in the union going forward."
A spokesman for the Teamsters declined to comment. But in a November 2012 statement the Teamsters noted that the "BCTGM's leaders are putting Teamster members in a horrible position – asking them to support a strike that will put them out of a job when they haven't even asked all their members to go on strike."
A spokeswoman for the BCTGM did not return phone calls to ABC News. In a March statement, BTCGM president David Durkee said, "We share the enthusiasm, energy and passions exhibited by new ownership, and believe our highly-motivated and skilled workforce will serve as indispensable partners in the seamless re-opening of factories," he said.
But, according to the Journal, Metropoulos and his son, Daren, felt confident that they would be able to hire non-union employees near the new plants.
"We're trying to find the most qualified people in these local markets to come work for the company," Daren Metropoulos told the Journal.