Union Sticks It to Hostess and Leaves Workers Jobless

Realville, USA ^ | Nov 16, 2012 | Ombud

[SquarePants]

I guess there was a time when unions did some good. I know my great grandfather was a big supporter of them, but frankly I can't see where they do anything good at all anymore. From the time I was a kid, all I've ever understood about them was that they're associated with organized crime, and they're physically violent and proud of it. But over the last couple of years I've learned a little bit more, and I have to say I'm not at all enthusiastic about what I've seen.

First it was SEIU union thugs tossing beatdowns at TEA Partiers, and Democrat Congressmen letting them shout down citizens at constituent forums. Then it was the teacher's union in Wisconsin, trashing their statehouse and generally acting like a bunch of lawless creeps who I wouldn't trust with my children for a minute. Now it's a union killing their own employer and one of America's most ubiquitous brands.

The last couple of days I kept hearing about how Hostess management said they would be forced to cease operations and liquidate the company's assets if the union wouldn't agree to a deal. I figured it would be like most other labor disputes, with brinksmanship being tempered by the obvious reality that the workers would be better off with a job than with nothing at all.

But I was wrong. The unions decided to let their last hope of saving anyone's jobs go, and now the company looks like they'll be liquidated, and every single employee will lose their job. Amazing. Stating that the company doesn't have the resources to weather an extended strike, Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn announced today that everyone's losing their jobs, and the company's assets will be sold. Big win for the union, I guess, but it's a huge loss for the 18,000 workers. Correction. Ex-workers.

The most mystifying thing about is that most likely Twinkies and Ding-Dongs and their related products will survive. The product brands will be sold, and we probably won't have to suffer any type of interruption in our Twinkie supply, thank God. The ownership will get screwed, of course, having to sell the brands for whatever they can get. But the biggest losers are the workers. With unemployment at 8% and likely to go higher based on all the layoff announcements I've seen the past couple of weeks, how many of these workers do you ecpect to find jobs at all, much less better jobs?

To everyone's great relief, the union bigwigs who caused it all will be ok. None of them are likely to lose their jobs, and they'll no doubt prance on, free to create more suffering at whatever lucky company gets to host their next shakedown. I wonder how many of the people in that picture up top had any idea how successful they'd be at "sticking it to the man?" Somehow I doubt this is the outcome they wanted.

I'm not sure what the deal was that the Hostess workers' union rejected, but I have to wonder if the union bigwigs feel like their workers are somehow better off with another 18,000 of them out of work. Well, they got what they wanted.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I too could not eat enough to budge past rail-skinny as a kid. I wish I had that problem now, topping the scale at close to the breaking point.

[logic101.net]

absolute refusal - to learn.

Sorry, you are wrong; it is not that they (liberals) refuse to learn it is that they CANNOT BE WRONG! I have seen them in govt and had to deal with them over me in the private sector. No matter how badly the idea fails it is not a bad idea; we just didn’t do enough of it!

[Saundra Duffy]

My husband freezes twinkies and eats them like a popsickle. Unless the union rank-and-file revolt, there's nothing can be done. I heard on the news a union spokesperson saying the union wants to work with the people who buy the company. What?! These people are nuts! Who would want to work with those creeps? Bye bye America.

[Saundra Duffy]

Just before the holidays - all those folks out of work. This is a human nightmare!!!

[Enten]

Non government unions can eventually drive the employer into bankruptcy oblivion and their selves out of a job because the employer simply runs out of money. Government unions on the other hand can never run their employers into bankruptcy....there is always more settlement money either by printing it, taxing it or “borrowing it”.....viola! Perpetual unions!

[Eva]

I think that I wrecked my metabolsim by just not eating much. I hated my mother’s cooking, then when I was in seventh grade my Dad had a serious heart attack and my mother had to go back to work. I had to do all the cooking and i ate even less. I can’t believe anyone ate what I cooked. We ate the junk food though.

I only weighed about 40 pounds in first grade and I weighed 95 pounds when I graduated from high school. Not skinny anymore, though.

[onyx]

Please Donate Tonight

Please Donate Tonight

[autumnraine]

Or some REPUBLICAN stopped them from doing it 100% as planned.

That’s the usual excuse.

[BTCM]

I take that your teacher was not a NEA surporter?

[Twinkie]

“Twinkies were never a favorite.”

!! Baw! Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo! !! :o(

[Alberta's Child]

I hope I’m wrong, but I foresee a day when we have rioting in our streets.

You may be right about that. This Hostess story probably came closer to violence than most people realize. In the last days before the company decided to liquidate, they ended up with a situation where the Teamsters union was authorized by their own leadership to cross the picket line of the bakers union.

I predict that's going to be the ultimate demise of labor unions in this country ... when one is pitted against another as employment opportunities for low-skill labor shrink considerably.

[McGavin999]

Looks like most of those workers are hispanics. Now the illegals will be unemployed as well. I think soon unemployment will reach 25% across the country and then things will start getting nasty.

[NamVet71MP]

A Reuters article on Yahoo Finance Twinkies maker Hostess plans to go out of business lead with "(Reuters) - Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies snack cakes and Wonder Bread, is seeking a U.S. court's permission to go out of business..."

PERMISSION? To stop working??? Welcome to the American Gulag comrades.

[niteowl77]

HE eventually quit because he said that a lot of the union leaders were “As corrupt as some of the bas***d owners we were trying to fight.”

My grandfather had to join a union at the last place he worked - after his own business had been squeezed out by a company (from Chicago) who used mob tactics - and he had similar thoughts. He despised the absentee company men (from Chicago) that drove out occasionally to check on the peons, but he reserved the majority of his scorn for the union bosses (from Chicago) that drove out occasionally to check on the peons.

Mr. niteowl77

[Gay State Conservative]

[EricT.]

My employer doesn’t discriminate against minorities, women, the aged, but if your work history shows you were in a union, you’re not going to get hired.

When I went back to school, I got to help choose my replacement before leaving the small company I worked for. One idiot had the gall to include "Union Organizer" on his resume. We called him just to see if he would come in, but he was a no-show for his appointment.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Let them eat Twinkies.

[PittsburghAfterDark]

It’s likely a formality required by bankruptcy proceedings.

No judge is going to tell them not to stop working....

Yet.

[reg45]

And, at the new company, they will be at the bottom of the seniority list.

[laustinmo]

Hello,

Looking for contacts at Hostess.
Deal in distressed type merchandise.

Thanks,
Kenny
laustinmo@netscape.net