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Mr Backtrak, please do a quick google search of the last 20 years of hostess finances.

Youll discover that the unions gave into concessions multiple times while the leadership of the company continued to give themselves higher wages and bonuses.

The round that actually broke hostess was the 3rd or 4th time where the union was asked to take lower wages/benefits "for the good of the company". At which point they decided essentially "If your going to screw me again, well screw you too".

Viscur wrote:QUOTE (Viscur @ Jan 4 2013, 03:41 PM) Mr Backtrak, please do a quick google search of the last 20 years of hostess finances.

Youll discover that the unions gave into concessions multiple times while the leadership of the company continued to give themselves higher wages and bonuses.

The round that actually broke hostess was the 3rd or 4th time where the union was asked to take lower wages/benefits "for the good of the company". At which point they decided essentially "If your going to screw me again, well screw you too".

Once they knock you down to $12.00 per hour, Wal-Mart becomes a viable option.

Viscur wrote:QUOTE (Viscur @ Jan 4 2013, 10:41 PM) Mr Backtrak, please do a quick google search of the last 20 years of hostess finances.

Youll discover that the unions gave into concessions multiple times while the leadership of the company continued to give themselves higher wages and bonuses.

The round that actually broke hostess was the 3rd or 4th time where the union was asked to take lower wages/benefits "for the good of the company". At which point they decided essentially "If your going to screw me again, well screw you too".

I was gonna write this, but it's better coming from within the US.

The anti union bull@#(! like "right to work" is just astonishing. You guys have weak and toothless unions, and the repugs are trying to destroy what is left. Look at Sweden to see a very successful country with strong unions. It's not the unions that are the problem.

Check my play again, pretty sure I covered hostess operating costs, and compensation. when you run a company you should have the ability to run it anyway you like. Run it like an ass hat, and you should go out of business. It's not like the us has a lack of carebear anti trust laws to block competition from another snack cake company.

Pretty much everyone bounced off the fail rock. The bottom line: no one is buying snack cakes, so there's no need for a snack cake company. So there's no where for a union full of bakers to go. Hostess had a monopoly on a business that no one is competing for. If I was a union baker there, I would hit the books and then hit the bricks. That line of work is done.

When I hear stuff like this it kills me:

"But factory baking is the only thing I know how to dooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!"
"My family has been factory bakers for three generationsssssssss!!!!!"

That type of inflexibility is what keeps people from getting paid and advancing. I'm not saying that all people in unions are like this, I've got lots of family in the trades and they are smart, hard working people that always have stuff on the side when they are laid off. It's the people who get on the news and piss and moan about how big business wrecked their old way of doing stuff. What they are really saying is "keep subsidizing my old ineffecient methods, because I can't adapt to new business challenges."

Now I am not heartless, and hopefully the union has got a great strategy for retraining all of its members for new local careers in the market place, because they new this day was coming for a long time, and that would the right way to use those dues to help people out. Maybe the union will use it national connections to help place those people out there in the job market.

Cuz from what I've seen from the trade unions, they work on the other end, keeping the supply of labor low with apprentice requirements so the the wages stay up for established members. If work collapses in one area, the union hall with the work isn't going to accept more people because it puts down the people its protecting.

It's just more artifical market manipulaton, which puts in inefficiency which costs everyone more money.

There's ups and downs to all this stuff, I just hate the inefficiencies.

Adept wrote:QUOTE (Adept @ Jan 5 2013, 08:13 AM) The anti union bull@#(! like "right to work" is just astonishing. You guys have weak and toothless unions, and the repugs are trying to destroy what is left. Look at Sweden to see a very successful country with strong unions. It's not the unions that are the problem.

Meh comparing US to sweden is apples and oranges. In any case, the biggest reason unions in the US are pretty ineffective is because when they first came about, they were hugely effective and transformed the workplace. They also got lots of laws passed that sort of co-opted a lot of their reasons for being (wage laws, OSHA, etc). As a result, for the most part, the US is a pretty nice place to work, and most people have it pretty well. Now I will grant you that other places have it better (bene's in Euro countries are astonishingly good for instance). It's also far from perfect, and sure there are abuses and such. But certainly, the US is not a bad place to work for the vast majority.

Thats just because dollar is very well evaluated.

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jan 7 2013, 02:28 AM) But certainly, the US is not a bad place to work for the vast majority.

Oh I agree, but don't you think dismantling the unions would give too much power back to the employers... and start to degrade that situation?

To some degree, yes, and it's already happening. But to some degree, the government has filled in for unions, with lots of watchdog agencies like OSHA and the EEOC and such like.

The other sort of weird thing about the US is that it is relatively easy to start a business, so if you don't take care of your best workers they tend to quit and become your competition. It's sort of part of our culture.

Strangely enough, usually the cushiest positions in our economy are the jobs at the big corps. The people who get more "abused" so to speak are the ones who work for the smaller mom and pop situations.

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Jan 7 2013, 06:01 PM) Strangely enough, usually the cushiest positions in our economy are the jobs at the big corps. The people who get more "abused" so to speak are the ones who work for the smaller mom and pop situations.

And mom & pop often work themselves sick as well. Same story here really.

Happen to have a friend who was a driver for Hostess. You know the little white delivery truck version

The last proposal was for basically half the wage but longer hours. The work force simply decided that the wage was not worth the workload and handed in their pink slips to management for greener pastures. I cannot say that I don't understand the view.

They wanted them go from a kind of comfortable-ish middle class life to one that was struggling to make ends meet, probably lose the things that they have worked for years and years to obtain (who lives at half their current wage level? ), and work harder too. So Hostess went tits up for it.

I realize that there are any number of 30hr a week, making 50% less than the offer on the table at Hostess type people who would take the job in a second BUT that doesn't mean the Hostess wage was fair just the current one may not be.

So yes Im sad to see Hostess go *boom* from a childhood memories and really who can hate snack cakes POV, but mostly what backtrak said.. with a little more sympathy for the oh noes what am I going to do now creamy filling.

tl;dr *screeching monkey noises and finger sniffing*