Days of the Twinkie may be numbered

@hawkeye10,

Don't give me consensus among educated observers--you wouldn't know a well-balanced, considered assessment if it bit you in your pathetic ass. The union labor were being asked to take a pay cut (after they had already made concessions) while management's pay and benefits were being wildly inflated. You're an idiot.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Don't give me consensus among educated observers--you wouldn't know a well-balanced, considered assessment if it bit you in your pathetic ass. The union labor were being asked to take a pay cut (after they had already made concessions) while management's pay and benefits were being wildly inflated. You're an idiot.

we shall see if labor thinks they did right in refusing to agree to work rule changes from 04 onwards and take pay cuts at the end after they find out what their pension will be after the pbgc take over their pension funds. i dont know that this company could have survived the mismanagement, but labor sure did not try to partner with management to save the company.

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@hawkeye10,

"Partner?" So now you're in the business of making verbs from nouns? It figures that you jump on the newspeak bandwagon while billing yourself an independent thinker and a member of the political cognoscenti.

Labor gave all the concessions here, and in response, management gave themselves wildly irresponsible pay raises and bonuses. So i guess you think labor should have gotten down on their kness to blow the white, fat cats who were looting their company so they could keep their pathetic jobs at lower and lower wages until those clowns ran it into the ground anyway. I hate to repeat myself, but you're an idiot.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Labor gave all the concessions here, and in response, management gave themselves wildly irresponsible pay raises and bonuses. So i guess you think labor should have gotten down on their kness to blow the white, fat cats who were looting their company so they could keep their pathetic jobs at lower and lower wages until those clowns ran it into the ground anyway. I hate to repeat myself, but you're an idiot.

labor, knowing that this company was being run into the ground by consecutive bad owners and a always incompetent management team, was always free to go out and find a white knight, or buy the company themselves. it is pretty clear that labor did not care about the company anymore than management did, which is to say not much.

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@hawkeye10,

So, you are eager to suck off conservative spin doctors? Is that it? Is this intended to impress people with your dedication of teabagger ideology?

Because it sure has no relation to reality.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

So, you are eager to suck off conservative spin doctors? Is that it? Is this intended to impress people with your dedication of teabagger ideology?

Because it sure has no relation to reality.

a back of the hand dismissal will not work here....if you think i am wrong state where you claim that I am wrong. I will then precede to prove that you are either a liar or an idiot. I am right.

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http://redriverpak.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/jim-ignatowski-pic.jpg

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican company that is the world's largest bread baker, might hold the key to saving the Twinkie from extinction in a Hostess liquidation.

Though other companies have shown interest in buying some of Hostess' iconic brands, Bimbo might have the inside track, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

A $10 billion sales business, Bimbo has pushed its way into the baked-goods big leagues through smart acquisitions under the leadership of CEO Daniel Servitje Montull.

In 2010, Bimbo bought the North American fresh-baked unit of Sara Lee for $959 million, according to the Associated Press, and with it, well-known brands like Entenmann's and Thomas' English Muffins.

And this isn't the first time Bimbo has tried to save Twinkies. Bimbo in conjunction with a few others made a bid for the Twinkie-maker during its first bankruptcy 2007, but Bimbo ultimately backed out, according to Forbes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/bimbo-twinkies-mexican-hostess-liquidation_n_2155070.html

what would have happened had labor gone to Bimbo at that point and offered the long needed work rule changes if Bimbo bought the company? I think we know.....

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@hawkeye10,

I've already stated where you are wrong. The CEO got a 300% pay increase taking him from just under one million a year to well over two million a year; several exectutives got pay raises in excess of 50%, for hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and you want to claim that labor making even more concessions would have kept the company afloat. You're living in la-la land.

I've never seen you prove anything here, other than that you're an idiot, and we've all known that for years.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I've already stated where you are wrong. The CEO got a 300% pay increase taking him from just under one million a year to well over two million a year; several exectutives got pay raises in excess of 50%, for hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and you want to claim that labor making even more concessions would have kept the company afloat. You're living in la-la land.

I've never seen you prove anything here, other than that you're an idiot, and we've all known that for years.

labors chances to be part of saving this company started at least a decade before that happened. they never tried. you have no point.

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@hawkeye10,

Bullshit.

In December, 2011, the New York Post quotes an employee as saying: "We understand that, should we pursue some form of legal action to require the company to live up to the terms of the contract, they may close, but we have come to believe that they will close anyway. We believe the company is poorly managed and the only hope is a complete change in management." (emphasis added)

There are 6,600 union employees at Hostess. The CEO got a raise of $1,800,000 dollars at a time when the company was asking those employees to take an 8% pay cut. Yet you continue to blame labor for the problems here. Nine other company executives got raises amounting to millions of dollars. If those men, fewer than a dozen, had not taken pay raises, and in fact had themselves taken 8% cuts in their pay, it would have had a much greater impact on the company's finances. Hostess was carrying millions in debt, and at the same time giving millions in pay increases to the clowns who got them into the mess.

Interstate Bakeries filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and union employees (remember, 6600 out of 18,500 employees) made wage and benefit concessions in exchange for equity. They were acting in good faith. That claim of yours about labor's behavior over the last decade is bullshit, like everything else you post.

You're a loon.

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@Setanta,

I said myself that it looks like owners decided awhile ago that the way to maximize value was to shut down and thus free the brand value from at least the union and the pension costs. The plants are also all or almost all exess capacity in the industry so an ongoing bakery company could further drive value of the brand by making hostess products in their plants. It sure looks to me that paying the current management team more money was justified because they needed to be convinced to stick around through the wind down, and because they are now tarred with being the drivers of a failed company. The last pay raises are debatatable, but it is not a slam dunk that they were a bad idea.

You Set keep ignoring my assertion that the unions have miscalculated for a long time...the unwillingness of owners to let recent management suffer along with labor does not bleach the last 10 years of union leadership of their colossal mistakes.

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@hawkeye10,

The story that managment tells is that they finally had numbers when in sep Bimbo and some other big players got back to them on what they valued the brands to be worth after the union, plants, debt and pensions were cut away. Management says that the union needed to agree to terms that made keeping open the more attractive choice. I don't believe it..I think that they decided then for sure to close down, that all the rest was a play to lay as much blame on labor as they could.

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@Setanta,

Goodness, the loss of twinkees has you apoplectic.

Here's a helpful hint: Forget the twinkees and Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, take the wireless keyboard off your bloated gut, get off your fat ass and take one of your little dogs for a walk.

Your enormous, septic spleen is bound to kill you, but you'll live a little longer with a bit of exercise.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Nice! Could it possibly be that people actually give a **** about working people losing their jobs?

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@Ceili,

Who doesn't care about people losing their jobs?

If you think that such concern is motivating Setanta's vitriol, I have a miraculous cure for cancer in which I would ask you to invest.

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@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

Nice! Could it possibly be that people actually give a **** about working people losing their jobs?

Nore importantly give a **** about our generally declining standard of living?? Hostess workers were never going to keep what they had, but had they been smarter they could have done better.

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Explain to me why the average worker should make concessions when the upper management are millionaires? You live in a recession economy, everyone should bite the bullet, not just the employees.

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@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

Explain to me why the average worker should make concessions when the upper management are millionaires? You live in a recession economy, everyone should bite the bullet, not just the employees.

When the people are ready to force change there will be change. There are no victims here, just fools who tolorate abuse.

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@hawkeye10,

I have no sympathy for the now former employees of hostess....they tolorated for a very long time horendously bad leadership from both management and labor, they in the end got what they had coming to them.

**** em......

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Days of the Twinkie may be numbered

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