R.I.P. the Twinkie.

This is the OTHER side of the coin that you flip when you go on strike people.

"Hostess suspended bakery operations at all its factories and said its stores will remain open for several days to sell already-baked products."
QUICK BUY IT AND SELL IT ON EBAY FOR $$$$$$$

"We are going to go out of business, piss off our customers temporarily but will reform as a new company that won't fall into the same union traps." Is all I read. Oh well. I hate unions. I can't say I'm too upset.

FYI, the strike happened over a two percent pension cut. 2%.

Who cares? Twinkies are gross, and plenty of other companies make tastey cakes that taste exactly the same.

Aw, I was going to post this topic myself. I wanted to be the one to announce the death of Twinkies.
I'm just going to try to celebrate this as a blow to what I think is an unhealthily overindustrialized food industry (and overindustrialized society in general), even though I know that it, realistically, it's mostly just going to result in Twinkies/Wonderbread/etc. being owned by a different company and a bunch of people losing jobs at an especially bad time for job losses.

Time to start searching again...

Where does that come from?
Never heard anything about a pension cut, although sometime last year they had (presumably temporarily) frozen pensions completely.
I have no idea why the strike, specifically, happened, and Rayburn had made pretty damned clear that if the unions didn't cooperate, everyone would lose their jobs. The BCTGM president, Frank Hurt, apparently spread a lot of misinformation, on which basis the bankruptcy court judge allowed Hostess to enforce their final contract offer after BCTGM had voted against it; it called for 8% wage cuts and reductions in insurance contributions (on top of previous concessions from a previous bankruptcy some years ago; according to the union, huge ones), among other details.

Post has been edited 9 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2012, 2:02 am by EzDay281.

Does that mean you lost yours? Because I know an awesome place that's always hiring as long as you are able to speak and type. And it isn't terribly far. $11.60/hour up to 28 hours.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2012, 2:55 am by FaRTy1billion.

A little quick to blame the unions here. You and I don't know whether the strike was legitimate or not. Maybe Hostess was pissing all over its workers, maybe the union was being a snob, or maybe a little bit of both.

---

So I did some research. Turns out the company was being horribly mismanged from the beginning. In 2011 they weren't doing so hot and top executives received a 75-80% pay raise. This year they decided to work for a salary of $1, but that really doesn't speak much. So during this whole management crisis the union went through negotiations, got an agreement, then the management turns around and wants to change the agreement at the employees' expense. Well, the employees didn't like that and went on strike.

What you see here is nothing more than the result of capitalism at work. It's terrible that these folks have their livelihoods taken away from them because of our system, but I'm not blaming the unions for what's happened here. The business failed because the people pulling the strings practiced bad business.

I don't know, maybe the workers delivered an ultimatum and thought it really wasn't worth the pay cut to keep working for a company circling the drain.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2012, 3:53 am by Sacrieur.

Yeah, someone on Slashdot summed it up similarly, Sac. People get suckered into having pay cuts and going through a lot of stress because the "business will turn around in a couple of months". Working conditions and pay erode further, possibly to the point of working for free but "being paid later". Then the company goes bankrupt and the workers all get fired anyway. In some respects, it's better to just stick a fork in it early on and save everyone the stress and let them move on.

That's the part that I don't understand. How does that benefit anyone?

elaborate plz

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2012, 1:01 pm by EzDay281.

It needs to be reformed, what's the problem here? And the article says only one union came to an agreement; they halted production because the second union couldn't reach an agreement. I would just as readily blame the mismanagement of union as I would the mismanagement of the company (spoiler: union bosses only care about their own pockets)

Simple reason : Hostess needs to give more money to the CEO.