Posted on 10/06/2009 11:24:02 PM PDT by neverdem
Standing at long tables at the end of an assembly line, gowned women pack what are likely to be some of the last biscotti, fudge stars and breadsticks produced at the Stella D’oro bakery plant in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. The women stack 10,000 cookies a day into plastic trays.
A tiny label on the packages says the cookies were made in a union bakery. These will be collector’s items.
More than a year ago, Brynwood Partners, a private equity firm that owned Stella D’oro, opened negotiations with the union representing its bakers and packers. The owners had a list of demands. They wanted, for instance, to cut the salaries of the women packing the cookies by $1 an hour for each of the next five years. They are now making $18 an hour; at the end of the contract, they would be making $13. Other changes included the elimination of a pension plan.
These cuts were needed to keep the business going, the Brynwood negotiators said, to make pay and benefits comparable with other jobs in the Bronx.
There was one other change demanded by Brynwood: the union label on the package had to go.
“What does that have to do with money?” asked Mike Filippou, who worked as a lead mechanic at Stella D’oro for more than 14 years. “That’s just about one thing: it’s about control.”
Now the brand is being sold to Lance Snacks, and production of the cookies will be moving to a nonunion bakery in Ohio. The Stella D’oro bakery in Kingsbridge is scheduled to close within the next week or so, costing 155 jobs. It is the end of a business started by a family of Italian immigrants in the Bronx in 1932, and had a devoted following among not...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you can’t make it in NYC... you’re probably making an obscene profit..
It was a shot across the bow to the union... shape up or this stuff is going elsewhere and nobody will know the difference.
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FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
$18 just to pack some cookies? I knew I missed my calling.
What a great example of what unions have done to business in this country!
Many people blame the management of unionized manufacturers for their woes, because they “give-in” to the unions.
However, as you can see, the NLRB (or government) sides with the unions more often than not. The fix is in....people who try to fight unions do so with both hands tied behind their back with regulations and rules enacted over the last 100 years by liberals.
Next time you see a US company in decline, don’t blame management.....blame liberals.
Plus a pension plan, which is probably a 50/50 deal, medical plans, and paid, accumulating sick time.
Unions always cry that they need inflationary wage increases (and then some) but they just can’t get it through their heads that unions are the major cause of a never ending inflation cycle in the first place.
“These will be collector’s items.”
Cookies are collectibles? Liberals are nuts.
Yeah, and the liberals want to run the entire health care system. God help us!
I keep making this point.....in the England, there are millions employed by the National Health System as unionized government employees. All are loyal voters to keep the system in place.
Now consider that the US is approximately 6 times the size of England with that many millions of former ACORN workers employed by the government.
No kidding. There sure are worse ways to earn less money, like flipping burgers and collecting trash.
He's right that it's about control and it shouldn't be the union controlling a private business. The owners are within their rights to do as they please.
He nailed it but doesn't see that he's doing the very thing that he's damning the company for.
it’s funny...i moved to Franklin as you know and the Michigan and Ohio folks here are largely conservative...they may not get teary eyed at Johnny Comes Marching Home but they aren’t so bad...Michigan folks especially whites who survived Detroit are a lot like this Jackson MS boy except they talk funny..lol...many even murder deer and other sweet critters like I do
Kali folks here are liberal as rule....NYers close but not quite so much
Nashville proper influx is almost all liberals...that is where they choose to live for that reason and not out here with us.
I may toss my cookies...for free.
And now, no jobs.
Smart union members.
That is how the Garment Workers Union kept from paying wages to people when garment factories started shutting down in NY. You don't have a job and aren't paying union fees, then you ain't in the union.
Michiganders and Ohioans in Florida are largely conservative as well (aside from the Bloomfield Hills Jewish folks), with most settling on the gulf side. Not too many UAW types leave the state, with many of those folks retiring to the UP instead.
Thanks for the ping!
Unions are like virulent bacterial infections, they infest a host and if for whatever reason the hosts immune system can’t fight the toxin, the infection slowly kill it.
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