Hostess won’t be stiffing them anymore, will it?
Ok, the contracts embedded horrendously stupid conditions - can’t ship bread and other products on the same truck eg.
But management AGREED to every one of those ridiculous conditions. They’ve got to take some responsibility for that.
Never the fault of the poor, oppressed unions, at least by LA Times standards,.
Hmmm, and - of course - those modernization funds would have come from where?
I totally agree that management in that company - and in most companies - is right out of Dilbert.
But take the ineptness and corruptness of management, multiply it by a googol, and we’re approaching a fraction of the sleeze of a typical union leader.
An idiot without proper training becomes a union leader.
An idiot with an MBA becomes a manager.
I suppose you could make a business case for way the company was run for the past 10 years. They had a stale product line whose popularity was sinking. Either you invest in building a whole new product line or you milk the company for whatever you can get out of it for as long as you can.
Who knows, that might have been the smartest strategy?
MOST companies are struggling with pension obligations, even to make the minimum required contributions. I have no idea how the company was run, but wouldn’t expect the LA Times reporter to be unbiased.
Is it unreasonable to think union demands like artificially inflated wages, pensions, and other benefits kept them from spending enough on modernization?
I don’t know the answers, just not ready to swallow the LA Times story so easily.
Same crap we had to listen to about Detroit.... it wasn’t the unions but bad management. That should be the union motto.
I am so sick of the CEO getting a raise argument. It didn’t amount to squat compared to the amount of cuts required for the bankruptcy. It wouldn’t have saved them. It wouldn’t have saved enough even if the CEOs had worked for free.
It’s ridiculous! 2+2=5 with these people.
Do you really have to modernize to make, box and ship a twinkie?
Hilarious!
Modernization usually results in layoffs.
Unions, like our brainless President, think automation in a factory hurts our economy.
.
It was a joint effort, bad management and bad unions killed Hostess, a company, that with even mediocre management, should have been making money hand over fist.
But it was a union that administered the killing blow.
“It failed because the people that ran it had no idea what they were doing. Every other excuse is just an attempt by the guilty to blame someone else.”
What was it that Hillary said about “I can’t be held responsib for every undercapitalized business...”
Hostess may have been poorly run but corporate taxes and various regulations distort the choices made by company managers. A common theme is the lack of reinvesting in plant & equipment.
Well,then.. a struggling company is dead, 18,500 employees are without jobs and the union made its point... so I guess it`s a win-win for everyone....somehow.
I believe the headline states the truth but only by accident. The idiot union members need to learn a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, but the retard “managers” who pulled out 100K a month ought to be banned from corporate leadership for life
The Bankruptcy court, told the unions to take the deal or leave it.
Company management had no say in that part of the matter.
The number of unions and insurance companies, combined with the wide array of contracts involved, made comprehensive, economical management, impossible.
The unions got what the deserved.
I hope the businesses buying the assets only operate in right to work states.
This article is complete garbage.