Hostess Brands Says It Will Liquidate

[Barrister]

More than a quarter of employees striking at a beleaguered company isn't a substantial issue?

Especially when the workers in question are bakers working for a baked goods company?

No, let's not blame the fundamental problem of an archaic market model that, in the day and age of SuperGiants and Wegman's, where SuperWalmarts and even Targets department stores now sell food, still maintains 570 retail bakeries.  Who the fuck under the age of 70 goes to a product-specific bakery?  No, let's not blame the lack of consolidating the distribution model like its competitors did, and put the product straight to 3rd party shelves.  Let's not blame the private equity firm and the fucking HEDGE FUND creditor that's running the company because, you know, hedge funds know how to improvise, adapt and overcome an increasingly unpopular product that's seen major losses in the post-carbs-are-bad-world-with-no-other-product-alternatives market with an executive top-heavy company.

Instead, let's blame the union representing bakers making $11.64 an hour for refusing to take an additional 8% wage cut on top of forcing employees to pay a 20% payroll contribution to their healthcare coverage while the company shaves 80% of its contribution to pension plans--on top of the cuts they accepted after the first bankruptcy.  While 19 executives split $1.75M.  Six CEOs in 10 years.  At a salary of $125,000 a fucking month.

Incompetent management and vulture capitalists gets a pass every fucking time for driving their businesses into the ground with lender leverage with you people, and yet you want to blame the worker bees for actually having the audacity to look after their interests, which get hosed over and over again.

I hope each and every one of you are assfucked and subsequently murdered in your sleep by Ann Romney's horse.  You fucking assholes.

Blame really doesn't get you anywhere though, does it.

Executive compensation is a fun topic to be sure, but even paying your execs zero wasn't going to save Hostess.  What they needed to do to survive was lower salaries and benefits.  Something other unions were willing to do.  Something the workers were willing to do.  But not this particular union leadership.

[sbr]

From this Swede's perspective America is in many ways a Socialist hellhole.

Get a better perspective?

Nah. You have out-of-control unions, you fight school vouchers, you like mail monopoly, you have estate tax etc etc etc. Socialist scum.

[Sheilbh]

Blame really doesn't get you anywhere though, does it.

When there's a pattern happening in numerous companies then I think it should.  Executive compensation's only a fun topic because everyone else is getting shafted and told we're all in it together.  In this case unsecured creditors of the company told the bankruptcy court that 4 executives were recently awarded 80% pay rises.  The union may have killed the company but I'd argue it's that sort of management that made it terminal.

Individuals can leave the union, but the union continues to bargain on their behalf, and they continue to have to pay union dues.

I always forget this about North America.

The initial strike would have to be approved by a vote, and the ultimate settlement would be voted on, but that's the limit of the democratic involvement.

Given that the strike started a week ago those workers voted on it at most 4-6 weeks ago.

Aside from that I agree with CdM and the Atlantic.  You can fairly blame the bakers union for not conceding enough and for actually finally killing the company.  But I don't think you can blame them for what I've read about the incompetence of the company's management since the buyout in 2004, or the fact that it was a highly leveraged company that left bankruptcy in 2004 with more debt than it started with (despite the unions taking significant pay and benefit cuts). 

[Neil]

It's interesting that CdM equates the best interests of the workers with those of the union leadership.

[The Brain]

The owners wrecked the company.

[Razgovory]

More than a quarter of employees striking at a beleaguered company isn't a substantial issue?

Especially when the workers in question are bakers working for a baked goods company?

No, let's not blame the fundamental problem of an archaic market model that, in the day and age of SuperGiants and Wegman's, where SuperWalmarts and even Targets department stores now sell food, still maintains 570 retail bakeries.  Who the fuck under the age of 70 goes to a product-specific bakery?  No, let's not blame the lack of consolidating the distribution model like its competitors did, and put the product straight to 3rd party shelves.  Let's not blame the private equity firm and the fucking HEDGE FUND creditor that's running the company because, you know, hedge funds know how to improvise, adapt and overcome an increasingly unpopular product that's seen major losses in the post-carbs-are-bad-world-with-no-other-product-alternatives market with an executive top-heavy company.

Instead, let's blame the union representing bakers making $11.64 an hour for refusing to take an additional 8% wage cut on top of forcing employees to pay a 20% payroll contribution to their healthcare coverage while the company shaves 80% of its contribution to pension plans--on top of the cuts they accepted after the first bankruptcy.  While 19 executives split $1.75M.  Six CEOs in 10 years.  At a salary of $125,000 a fucking month.

Incompetent management and vulture capitalists gets a pass every fucking time for driving their businesses into the ground with lender leverage with you people, and yet you want to blame the worker bees for actually having the audacity to look after their interests, which get hosed over and over again.

I hope each and every one of you are assfucked and subsequently murdered in your sleep by Ann Romney's horse.  You fucking assholes.

Preach it brother!

[merithyn]

No, let's not blame the fundamental problem of an archaic market model that, in the day and age of SuperGiants and Wegman's, where SuperWalmarts and even Targets department stores now sell food, still maintains 570 retail bakeries.  Who the fuck under the age of 70 goes to a product-specific bakery?  No, let's not blame the lack of consolidating the distribution model like its competitors did, and put the product straight to 3rd party shelves.  Let's not blame the private equity firm and the fucking HEDGE FUND creditor that's running the company because, you know, hedge funds know how to improvise, adapt and overcome an increasingly unpopular product that's seen major losses in the post-carbs-are-bad-world-with-no-other-product-alternatives market with an executive top-heavy company.

Instead, let's blame the union representing bakers making $11.64 an hour for refusing to take an additional 8% wage cut on top of forcing employees to pay a 20% payroll contribution to their healthcare coverage while the company shaves 80% of its contribution to pension plans--on top of the cuts they accepted after the first bankruptcy.  While 19 executives split $1.75M.  Six CEOs in 10 years.  At a salary of $125,000 a fucking month.

Incompetent management and vulture capitalists gets a pass every fucking time for driving their businesses into the ground with lender leverage with you people, and yet you want to blame the worker bees for actually having the audacity to look after their interests, which get hosed over and over again.

I hope each and every one of you are assfucked and subsequently murdered in your sleep by Ann Romney's horse.  You fucking assholes.

God, you are so sexy to me right now. Will you have my babies?

I agree with everything you're posting. My comments were for the most immediate situation that ended in liquidation, not in the long-term problems that have brought them to this point.

[Syt]

More than a quarter of employees striking at a beleaguered company isn't a substantial issue?

Especially when the workers in question are bakers working for a baked goods company?

No, let's not blame the fundamental problem of an archaic market model that, in the day and age of SuperGiants and Wegman's, where SuperWalmarts and even Targets department stores now sell food, still maintains 570 retail bakeries.  Who the fuck under the age of 70 goes to a product-specific bakery?  No, let's not blame the lack of consolidating the distribution model like its competitors did, and put the product straight to 3rd party shelves.  Let's not blame the private equity firm and the fucking HEDGE FUND creditor that's running the company because, you know, hedge funds know how to improvise, adapt and overcome an increasingly unpopular product that's seen major losses in the post-carbs-are-bad-world-with-no-other-product-alternatives market with an executive top-heavy company.

Instead, let's blame the union representing bakers making $11.64 an hour for refusing to take an additional 8% wage cut on top of forcing employees to pay a 20% payroll contribution to their healthcare coverage while the company shaves 80% of its contribution to pension plans--on top of the cuts they accepted after the first bankruptcy.  While 19 executives split $1.75M.  Six CEOs in 10 years.  At a salary of $125,000 a fucking month.

Incompetent management and vulture capitalists gets a pass every fucking time for driving their businesses into the ground with lender leverage with you people, and yet you want to blame the worker bees for actually having the audacity to look after their interests, which get hosed over and over again.

I hope each and every one of you are assfucked and subsequently murdered in your sleep by Ann Romney's horse.  You fucking assholes.

I keep reading your posts with Joe Pesci's voice. This one works pretty well.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The bakers union nailed the stake in the heart but this company just simply wasn't viable. Hostess just hasn't been well ran for a long, long time. The original ownership ran it into bankruptcy, private equity ran it no better, specialist CEOs they hired didn't do anything etc etc.

The junk food market may be taking some hits, but it's going strong. Companies like Kellogg still sell a lot of junk food in the baked good's space, as do the owners of brands like Little Debbie. Candy companies like Mars are doing fine, Kraft makes tons of junk food etc. All of those companies are, however, more diversified and they continually release new products to remain relevant.

[MadImmortalMan]

Where is Bain when we need them?

[Admiral Yi]

No, let's not blame the fundamental problem of an archaic market model that, in the day and age of SuperGiants and Wegman's, where SuperWalmarts and even Targets department stores now sell food, still maintains 570 retail bakeries.  Who the fuck under the age of 70 goes to a product-specific bakery?  No, let's not blame the lack of consolidating the distribution model like its competitors did, and put the product straight to 3rd party shelves.  Let's not blame the private equity firm and the fucking HEDGE FUND creditor that's running the company because, you know, hedge funds know how to improvise, adapt and overcome an increasingly unpopular product that's seen major losses in the post-carbs-are-bad-world-with-no-other-product-alternatives market with an executive top-heavy company.

Instead, let's blame the union representing bakers making $11.64 an hour for refusing to take an additional 8% wage cut on top of forcing employees to pay a 20% payroll contribution to their healthcare coverage while the company shaves 80% of its contribution to pension plans--on top of the cuts they accepted after the first bankruptcy.  While 19 executives split $1.75M.  Six CEOs in 10 years.  At a salary of $125,000 a fucking month.

Incompetent management and vulture capitalists gets a pass every fucking time for driving their businesses into the ground with lender leverage with you people, and yet you want to blame the worker bees for actually having the audacity to look after their interests, which get hosed over and over again.

I hope each and every one of you are assfucked and subsequently murdered in your sleep by Ann Romney's horse.  You fucking assholes.

I've seen this type of thinking come up over and over and over again.  Cars, airlines, steel, coal, virtually any unionized industry you can think.

People act as if there is absolutely no relationship between demand for the product or service a company sells and the compensation it can afford to pay its workers.  People stop eating as many Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, well, that doesn't have anything to do with the workers, right?  The Japs start flooding the market with cheap, well-made cars, that's not the UAW's fault, is it?  Demand for coal disappears because of cheap new sources of natural gas in the North Sea to power electricity generation plants, it must be a plot by that Nazi Thatcher.  The US experiences a Great Depression and the price of coal craters, we better start shooting scabs.

Why is supply and demand such an impenetrable concept to the progessive left?  It's just two lines on a graph, one that (usually) slopes down and one that (usually) slopes up.

[Legbiter]

The company made extremely unhealthy, shit products that no one in their right mind should consume. I feel as bad for them as I would if a giant meth lab blew up.

Kraft or some other megacorp will aquire the various brand rights and continue selling lardass, type II diabetic Americans their beloved hydrogenated vegetable oils smothered in HFCS, wrapped in sugary corn starch.

[Ed Anger]

Whargarbl.

[Legbiter]

Whargarbl.

 

[Ed Anger]

I misspelled it. My apologies.