Hostess Brands Says It Will Liquidate

[dps]

You keep ignoring the CEOs' actions. Odd, that.

Very odd.

What the fuck are you talking about?

A responsible CEO would have forseen that fewer people would eat junk food and moved the business away from it.

Is it even true that fewer people eat junk food?  Maybe a lower percentage of the population, but in absolute numbers, I'm not so sure.

[Neil]

You keep ignoring the CEOs' actions. Odd, that.

Very odd.

What the fuck are you talking about?

A responsible CEO would have forseen that fewer people would eat junk food and moved the business away from it.

Exactly.  A responsible CEO would have increased shareholder value by putting a lot of those people out of work a long time ago.

[CountDeMoney]

Is it even true that fewer people eat junk food?  Maybe a lower percentage of the population, but in absolute numbers, I'm not so sure.

As long as there was marijuana and first graders, there would be Twinkies.  An innovative CEO would've marketed specifically to first grader potheads.

[The Brain]

Did they try to sell Twinkies abroad?

[Admiral Yi]

No, it doesn't work that way;  you see, Free Marketeers like Yi believe in the invincibility of the top-down model--one where executive management, with their countless useless books on "leadership", their useless Executive MBAs, their statistically based management models like Six Sigma or the latest bullshit invention du jour give them all the moral elasticity needed to treat their employees like chattel, squeezing them for their own bad decisions and their incompetency.  The "Job Creators" always get a pass with this crowd.  But those with the jobs?  Fuck 'em.

Profits down because of our fuck-ups?  Shave off some employees.  Reduce their hours, cut their benefits.  Work longer.  Work harder.  For less money. 
Profits down because we can't innovate?  Get rid of pensions;  force everybody to play the Wall Street casino, and let their retirement hopes rest on finding the occasional dropped chip from the big gamblers.

The Japanese build cheaper cars with better fuel efficiency?  Blame the UAW;  after all, even though they don't design the fuckers, or the fucked up and over-saturated dealership model or install planned obsolescence as a corporate strategy, hey, they're a convenient scapegoat, because they're overhead.  Always easier to blame the commies rather than the capitalists.

Never mind that successful companies have no problem investing in their workforce, that a happy workplace is a union-free workplace, that truly successful companies are those that understand that living wages, investment and retention is a force multiplier.   You want to bitch about Teamsters?  Fine, but some of the biggest retail distributors like Wal Mart and Best Buy have non-unionized trucking fleets, and why do they not need the Teamsters?  Because they're paid the best.   But their in-store staffs?  Faceless, replaceable chattel.  But they knew enough not to fuck with their distribution network by paying truckers enough not to get unionized, or even want to.  There's no need for unions when corporations ran their businesses more on basic fucking humanity than greed and venality, and guess fucking what, basic humanity doesn't cut into shareholder value that fucking much.

So Hostess had a "supply and demand" problem;  funny how the other players in the shit-for-food market don't.  I don't see Little Debbies or Entemann's or anybody else's product having trouble finding their ways onto shelves.  But hey, let's keep 570 Hostess bakery outlets as a relic of business model from 40 years ago, and instead blame the union representing bakers making shit for wages instead, because they dare to say that enough is fucking enough.  The only "supply and demand" Free Marketeers are interested in is an endless supply of low wage workers that can't demand shit, like a living wage.  If Hostess' incompetent management could've figured out how to outsource Twinkie production overseas, we'd have been buying them from the Chinese, complete with lead paint and sawdust, in a fucking heartbeat.  For half the production and twice the retail.

Yeah it's "the market",  it's always "the market".  For a bunch of snot nosed atheists and agnostics, you all sure put a hell of a lot of blind fucking faith in the "Invisible Hand" and the infallibility of its Wall Street priests.  Pretty fucking ironical.

The suits get a pass to drive their companies into the ground, hit their silk parachutes, and move on to the next company they can drive into the ground, all the while guiltless and blameless for perpetuating the same upside-down and fundamentally immoral model over and over:  stagnated wages, slashed benefits, and on and on.  But unions are the bad guys.  Always the same with you people.

Are we having a debate on the labor market and the plight of Hostess workers or are we having a contest to see who can achieve the highest density of meaningless words in their posts?

We had this exact same debate during the GM and Chrysler vote buyouts.  You and other friends of labor claimed it was a result of bad management, in total denial that a rapacious (or dare I say it--greedy ) UAW priced themselves right out of the market.  It was all management's fault that they couldn't come up with a way to build the small, fuel-efficient that American buyers had demonstrated they didn't want, and outcompete the Japs with unionized labor that costs twice what theirs does.

I don't think management is infallible.  What kind of retard would think that?  The bizarro universe version of the retard that thinks unions can *never* ask for too much, that's who.  The management of Beatrice completely fucked up their brands.  Netflix made a fantastic mistake with their TV/DVD split.

One can try to make the argument that Hostess' management completely fucked up my not retooling their brand as the Hostess Spinach and Arugala Lite 'n' Healthy Wrap company.  I personally think that would not have been an easy transition.  But you and your friends don't even try to make the argument.  Any time a company faces falling demand, it's irrevocably, indisputably, any-fool-can-see a failing of management.

[CountDeMoney]

Save it for your next stockholder meeting with Tagg and the boys, Romnyi.

[dps]

Are we having a debate on the labor market and the plight of Hostess workers or are we having a contest to see who can achieve the highest density of meaningless words in their posts?

More to the point, if the alternative to taking a paycut and losing some benefits is your job going away, does it really matter at that point whose fault it is? 

[Admiral Yi]

Save it for your next stockholder meeting with Tagg and the boys, Romnyi.

Needs more vivid adjectives and colorful adverbs! 

[PDH]

Is it even true that fewer people eat junk food?  Maybe a lower percentage of the population, but in absolute numbers, I'm not so sure.

As long as there was marijuana and first graders, there would be Twinkies.  An innovative CEO would've marketed specifically to first grader potheads.

i.e.  Colorado State freshmen.

[CountDeMoney]

More to the point, if the alternative to taking a paycut and losing some benefits is your job going away, does it really matter at that point whose fault it is?

Mike Hummell, a receiving clerk and a member of the Bakers' union working in Lenexa, Kan., said he was making about $48,000 in 2005 before the company's first trip through bankruptcy. Concessions during that reorganization cut his pay to $34,000 last year, earning $16.12 an hour. He said the latest contract demands would have cut his pay to about $25,000, with significantly higher out-of-pocket expenses for insurance.

"The point is the jobs they're offering us aren't worth saving," he said Friday. "It instantly casts me into poverty. I wouldn't be able to make my house payment. My take-home would be less than unemployment benefits. Being on unemployment while we search for a new job, that's a better choice than working these hours for poverty wages."

When unemployment is the better option, hey, then all the Free Marketeers ought to applaud how libertarian they're being.

[CountDeMoney]

Save it for your next stockholder meeting with Tagg and the boys, Romnyi.

Needs more vivid adjectives and colorful adverbs! 

After almost 10 years of listening to your trickle-down bullshit, I've pretty much used them all up.

[Ed Anger]

There is nothing wrong with six sigma.

Or six smegma as some managers liked to call it.

[dps]

More to the point, if the alternative to taking a paycut and losing some benefits is your job going away, does it really matter at that point whose fault it is?

Mike Hummell, a receiving clerk and a member of the Bakers' union working in Lenexa, Kan., said he was making about $48,000 in 2005 before the company's first trip through bankruptcy. Concessions during that reorganization cut his pay to $34,000 last year, earning $16.12 an hour. He said the latest contract demands would have cut his pay to about $25,000, with significantly higher out-of-pocket expenses for insurance.

"The point is the jobs they're offering us aren't worth saving," he said Friday. "It instantly casts me into poverty. I wouldn't be able to make my house payment. My take-home would be less than unemployment benefits. Being on unemployment while we search for a new job, that's a better choice than working these hours for poverty wages."

When unemployment is the better option, hey, then all the Free Marketeers ought to applaud how libertarian they're being.

Maybe we ought to look at cutting back over-generous unemployment compensation.  A receiving clerk making $45 grand a year?  Shit, no wonder they went bankrupt.

[Maximus]

More to the point, if the alternative to taking a paycut and losing some benefits is your job going away, does it really matter at that point whose fault it is?

Only in that you're paying one of these parties to represent you in the workplace.

[CountDeMoney]

Maybe we ought to look at cutting back over-generous unemployment compensation.  A receiving clerk making $45 grand a year?  Shit, no wonder they went bankrupt.

So unemployment compensation should be kept below the poverty level?  Nice guy.