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Forum Post: Hostess: Union Rules were Harder to Digest than Twinkies

Posted 11 years ago on Nov. 22, 2012, 8:01 a.m. EST by clamor (-40) from Hopatcong, NJ
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

So, now they're unemployed. I guess the workers got what they wanted...

Hostess: Union Rules were Harder to Digest than Twinkies

Courtesy of Dr. Paul Price

Did union workers simply get their ‘Just Desserts’ for backing Hostess into a corner with too many unreasonable demands? Consider the evidence.

Union workers have now completed their mission. 18,500 jobs are gone forever.

The national labor bosses stood firm. Labor leaders are proud they stood up to those nasty ‘suits’ [see Entourage for definition] who refused to run a money-losing business simply to continue paying salaries and benefits.

Hostess posted a $341 million loss in 2011 on revenues of about $2.5 billion. Contributing to those 2011 losses:

-$52 million in Workers’ Comp Claims

-Dealing with 372 Distinct Collective-Bargaining Contracts

-Administration of 80 Separate Health and Benefits Plans

-Funding and Tending to 40 Discrete Pension Plans

-$31 million in year-over-year increases in wages and health care benefits for 2012 v. 2011

Uncounted in the above numbers were the outrageous union-imposed rules that made for a too-high-to-bear cost of sales:

-No truck could carry both bread and snacks even when going to the same location

-Drivers were not permitted to load their own trucks

-Workers who loaded bread were not allowed to also load snacks

-Bringing products from back rooms to shelves required another set of union employees

-Multi-Employer pension obligations made Hostess liable for other, previously bankrupted, retirement plan contributions from employees that never worked for Hostess at all

America has come to this. The only defense against insane union demands is the willingness to walk away and close shop.

With General Motors and Chrysler we found that even that remedy wouldn’t work.

Market Shadows http://www.marketshadows.com/2012/11/22/hostess-union-rules-were-harder-to-digest-than-twinkies/

5 Comments

5 Comments


Read the Rules
[-] 4 points by GirlFriday (17435) 11 years ago

Unions rock. We need more of them.

[-] 3 points by TrevorMnemonic (5827) 11 years ago

At my job union rules make it so engineers can't touch my DVS-9000.

At no point in time would they ever need to touch my board. From a 3rd party perspective it might sound weird that there are rules about that. But inside the company it makes perfect sense. I'm not allowed to work on the cameras. At no point in time does my job ever need me to do that. That's what the engineers do.

Considering that union contracts contained concessions after previous accepted concessions... hostess did not break because of union demands. Hostess broke because of shitty management and bad executives.

Also have you ever heard of a production line?

People need raises when inflation continues at the rate it's going.

[-] 2 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 11 years ago

STINKLE

[-] 2 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

If those workers felt strongly enough that they were not making enough to live on, then there is no difference between staying at Hostess making minimum or almost minimum and getting a minimum wage job after they lost their Hostess gig. So they were willing to sink the fucking exploiting capitalists who owned the damn thing even if it meant their jobs, and I say they are heros for doing it.

Capitalism should be destroyed anyway possible, and if that means one company at a time then so be it. Socialism and worker-owned cooperatives is the egalitarian model all workers should pursue. Socialists of the world unite! http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html

[-] 1 points by shoozTroll (17632) 11 years ago

Would you also have a list of the work rules?

You have offered a VERY one sided view.

Do you work for FLAKESnews, or were you just born a flake?