You Go Unions!

[Doc]

Just desserts.

[Nanker]

From today's Wall Street Journal:

 

Hostess posted sales of $2.5 billion in 2011 but lost $341 million and lacked the cash flow to hold out through the bakers union work stoppage that had only lost a few days of production so far. One reason is a labor-rule burden that by comparison makes Detroit look like Hong Kong.

 

The snack giant endured $52 million in workers' comp claims in 2011, according to its bankruptcy filing this January. Hostess's 372 collective-bargaining agreements required the company to maintain 80 different health and benefit plans, 40 pension plans and mandated a $31 million increase in wages and health care and other benefits for 2012.

 

Union work rules usually required cake and bread products to be delivered to a single retail location using two separate trucks. Drivers weren't allowed to load their own vehicles, and the workers who loaded bread weren't allowed to load cake. On most delivery routes, another "pull up" employee moved products from back rooms to shelves.

 

Now, they're left to, well... eat cake.

[meazza]

It's easier to blame unions and tell the workers to find other jobs and ignore bad management at the executive level. Get over it dude! Thre executives failed and cost all these people their jobs. Those workers showed up every day and produced the product, rolled it onto the delivery trucks and the stores were stocked full of it!

 

Careful with throwing that free society talk around. I'm sure someone can dig through some older posts and find one of your rants and raves about the election and say hey we live in a free society! Don't like the results, move to another country!

 

**** happens dude. I have no clue what happened between management and unions and nor do I give a !@#$. Companies go belly up all the time. It's a risk of life. I work at a bank and I'll be out of a job soon. As we frogs say, c'est la vie.

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

As we frogs say, c'est la vie.

 

Merde.

[Jauronimo]

**** happens dude. I have no clue what happened between management and unions and nor do I give a !@#$. Companies go belly up all the time. It's a risk of life. I work at a bank and I'll be out of a job soon. As we frogs say, c'est la vie.

I think you meant "Je me rends!!!"

[Chef Jim]

 

How does the CEO get a raise from 750K to 2.55 million in this economy... Were they tanking the company from the get go and covering their azz with a nice compensation package? You know how many people that would have kept working if the CEO took a reasonable salary.

 

Why would they want to tank the company? You do realize that with no company that $2.55 mil salary goes away right?

[meazza]

I think you meant "Je me rends!!!"

 

Je me souviens.

[VABills]

You know the other thing is, not only were these workers offered to retain their jobs granted at a pretty significate pay cut, but the union membership would have received 25% of the stock for their concesssions. Way to make sure the whole story is know liberals.

[B-Man]

Politico's Cirilli, Others Ignore Heavy Democrat Involvement in Hostess Ownership and Management

Yesterday, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka may have broken a modern record for chutzpah exhibited by a labor leader Friday in criticizing management's decision at bankrupt snack maker Hostess Brands to liquidate in the wake of irreconcilable issues with its unions. In a Friday afternoon report at Politico, Kevin Cirilli not only let Trumka get away with it; he also lent the labor leader's contentions additional misleading support.

Trumka blamed the company's apparently imminent demise on "Bain-style Wall Street vultures." He wants everyone to believe that it's greedy, eeeevil Republican private-equity types who are on the brink of putting yet another company out of business. The "clever" framing of that quoted phrase appears to indicate that Trumka already knew better. It seems very likely that Cirilli also knew better. Three hours before the initial time stamp of Cirilli's report, Zero Hedge re-exposed the heavy involvement of D-D-D-Democrats in Hostess's management and advisors originally documented way back in july at CNNMoney by David Kaplan

 

 

http://newsbusters.o...g#ixzz2CVFXww7m

[Nanker]

Oh, this is interesting:

[tomato can]

 

 

http://newsbusters.o...g#ixzz2CVFXww7m

 

B-MAN, even if you don't like unions or union workers how can you justify this,

 

 

Board of Directors

 

Brian Driscoll, CEO, around $750,000 to $2,550,000

Gary Wandschneider, EVP, $500,000 to $900,000

John Stewart, EVP, $400,000 to $700,000

David Loeser, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256

Kent Magill, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256

Richard Seban, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256

John Akeson, SVP, $300,000 to $480,000

Steven Birgfeld, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000

Martha Ross, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000

Rob Kissick, SVP, $182,000 to $273,008

 

 

Why weren't these exec's adapting to evolving customer tastes, public perceptions, and health standards which was clearly hurting this company? The workers took cuts and management got increases. They tried to make the workers pay the price for management's incompetence.

[TakeYouToTasker]

To the CEO salary vs. labor dispute:

 

It's a simple supply and demand situation. People who drive trucks, bake bread, and stand on assembly lines are 100% fungible. They could be replaced by a !@#$ing monkey, and aren't a value add to the company. They are essentially machine parts whose greatest contribution is being affordable, and showing up every day. In down economies they become even more replacable as the pool of fungible labor grows.

 

On the other hand, CEOs who can rescue a large company from bankruptcy are few and far between, and the compensation package nessecary to attract these types of individuals must be competitive with other companies, and account for scarcity.

 

The CEO is valuable and the laborer is not. End of story.

Edited November 17, 2012 by TakeYouToTasker

[tomato can]

To the CEO salary vs. labor dispute:

 

It's a simple supply and demand situation. People who drive trucks, bake bread, and stand on assembly lines are 100% fungible. They could be replaced by a !@#$ing monkey, and aren't a value add to the company. They are essentially machine parts whose greatest contribution is being affordable, and showing up every day. In down economies they become even more replacable as the pool of fungible labor grows.

 

On the other hand, CEOs who can rescue a large company from bankruptcy are few and far between, and the compensation package nessecary to attract these types of individuals must be competitive with other companies, and account for scarcity.

 

The CEO is valuable and the laborer is not. End of story.

 

They've had 6 CEOs since 2002, giving the latest a raise from $750,000 to $2,550,000, and none of these high-paid execs has done anything to revamp their products or their plants.

[TakeYouToTasker]

They've had 6 CEOs since 2002, giving the latest a raise from $750,000 to $2,550,000, and none of these high-paid execs has done anything to revamp their products or their plants.

What was deemed to be best for the company was to take a hard line stance with the unions, and liquidate if they didn't cave. The company's owners hired this latest CEO to do a job, and he did it well.

[KD in CA]

They've had 6 CEOs since 2002, giving the latest a raise from $750,000 to $2,550,000, and none of these high-paid execs has done anything to revamp their products or their plants.

 

Oh wow, $2.5MM!! That's enough to fund the union demands for what, 90 minutes? Idiots who continue to pump that red herring provide no input at all to the discussion about the rampant union greed.

[Just Jack]

On most delivery routes, another "pull up" employee moved products from back rooms to shelves.

 

A lot of companies do that, not just Hostess, since they'd rather their driver get his deliveries done, than spend time in the store stocking shelves when they can hire someone cheaper for that duty.

 

 

Meanwhile, at Walmart.....

 

Wal-Mart workers plan Black Friday walkout

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A group of Wal-Mart workers are planning to stage a walkout next week on Black Friday, arguably the biggest holiday shopping day for the world's largest retail store. The walkout builds on an October strike that started at a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles and spread to stores in 12 other cities. More than 100 workers joined in the October actions.

[meazza]

 

 

Oh wow, $2.5MM!! That's enough to fund the union demands for what, 90 minutes? Idiots who continue to pump that red herring provide no input at all to the discussion about the rampant union greed.

 

I don't understand what the issue is. Unions are a part of workers ability to negotiate. The issue I have is when they have political power.

 

In this case a company went bankrupt and life goes on.

 

Unions just like businesses pay the price for bad decisions.

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

When I was a kid growing up in Buffalo, most of my friends had 1 career goal - get into the Chevy plant or Bethlehem Steel and be set for life. Of course, we know now that the unions drove up the cost of labor so high that those plants shrunk or in some cases, were shuttered. Of course there were other reasons for the demise of manufacturing, but that was and still is, the conventional thinking.

 

Years later, around 2003, I came back to visit my mom, and I was reading an article in the News that the last running plant of Bethlehem in Lackawanna was shutting down. I think it was the specialty steel process, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong. The article said the plant was closing, and all the workers would be out of a job, BUT, there was a plant in Tonawanda that made similar products and the plant's owner offered to buy the Bethlehem operation and let everyone keep their jobs.

 

There was one catch: His plant had a different contract with the unions than the Bethlehem one and he wasn't going to be held hostage by either labor group. If the Bethlehem workers accepted the same contract as the Tonawanda plant, they could keep their jobs and life would go on as before.

 

The Bethlehem workers grumbled in public and said they'd worked too hard to get what they had now and they weren't going to compromise their current deal.

 

Ok, said the white knight, no deal. The plant closed and every single job was lost.

 

My thought at the time was, wow, haven't you guys learned anything since the 70s?

[meazza]

When I was a kid growing up in Buffalo, most of my friends had 1 career goal - get into the Chevy plant or Bethlehem Steel and be set for life. Of course, we know now that the unions drove up the cost of labor so high that those plants shrunk or in some cases, were shuttered. Of course there were other reasons for the demise of manufacturing, but that was and still is, the conventional thinking.

 

Years later, around 2003, I came back to visit my mom, and I was reading an article in the News that the last running plant of Bethlehem in Lackawanna was shutting down. I think it was the specialty steel process, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong. The article said the plant was closing, and all the workers would be out of a job, BUT, there was a plant in Tonawanda that made similar products and the plant's owner offered to buy the Bethlehem operation and let everyone keep their jobs.

 

There was one catch: His plant had a different contract with the unions than the Bethlehem one and he wasn't going to be held hostage by either labor group. If the Bethlehem workers accepted the same contract as the Tonawanda plant, they could keep their jobs and life would go on as before.

 

The Bethlehem workers grumbled in public and said they'd worked too hard to get what they had now and they weren't going to compromise their current deal.

 

Ok, said the white knight, no deal. The plant closed and every single job was lost.

 

My thought at the time was, wow, haven't you guys learned anything since the 70s?

 

Its hard to go back. As I stated earlier I am going to be unemployed soon (pending some news). I would rather sell crack than going back to making bread at minimum wage.

 

We very easily become spoiled.

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

Its hard to go back. As I stated earlier I am going to be unemployed soon (pending some news). I would rather sell crack than going back to making bread at minimum wage.

 

We very easily become spoiled.

 

I agree 100%, but if your bank said you could keep your job with (let's say) a 20% hit in salary, or maybe you'd no longer get medical benefits for life, maybe you'd have to think about that long and hard, if there were few options for a new job.