Quite the drag actually. Not that im into twinkies, but all those whom will now be un employed is tragic. Seems a strike at a time when the company is fighting bankruptcy was not a good decision. Work for LESS or not at all was a lousy choice,, but, MOST of the small businesses are doing just that to survive.
stockpiling twinkies forever is sadly an urban myth, from the twinkie wiki
A common urban legend claims that Twinkies have an infinite shelf life or can last unspoiled for a relatively long time of ten, fifty, or one hundred years due to chemicals used in production.[14] This urban legend is false, although Twinkies can last a relatively long time (25 days or more) because they are made without unstabilized dairy products and thus spoil more slowly than most bakery items
so better commit sugaricide now. But those brands and products are unlikely to disappear
Union President Frank Hurt said the company's failure was not the fault of the union but the "result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement" and that management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a plan by Wall Street investors to sell Hostess.
Sometimes there's more than meets the eye. Let's see what happens
4 corporate buyouts from 1981 to 1995 saddled an otherwise excellent company with a massive debt structure.
But on the way out the corporate vultures want to blame anyone else but themselves.
I've always held the opinion that if your company cannot afford to pay a decent wage to it's employees you should go out of business and make room for one that can.
Sadly Hostess is a victim of the 80's Romney style corporate raider buyout scams. They took an otherwise stellar brand with good infrastructure products and marketing and tanked it.
Now the top guys are gonna make a mint using Bankruptcy rules and piecemeal selling of the brand.
There was a run on twinkles at the supermarket, but I been stockpiling them for years now. I got a lead last weak on 10,000 and bought the whole supply. When the end comes, I will be prepared.
If some of you have ding dongs, I would be willing to trade. But no fake stuff made in china. I want the real deal.
Damn that black muslim president. This never would have happened under Mitt.
I worked for Continental Baking (Wonder and Hostess) for 15 years, and this analysis nails it.
There's not a huge profit margin in baking, but you have to be really incompetent to screw it up. Once the corporate MBAs got involved it was only a matter of time before they f*#ked it up.
4 corporate buyouts from 1981 to 1995 saddled an otherwise excellent company with a massive debt structure.
But on the way out the corporate vultures want to blame anyone else but themselves.
I've always held the opinion that if your company cannot afford to pay a decent wage to it's employees you should go out of business and make room for one that can.
Sadly Hostess is a victim of the 80's Romney style corporate raider buyout scams. They took an otherwise stellar brand with good infrastructure products and marketing and tanked it.
Now the top guys are gonna make a mint using Bankruptcy rules and piecemeal selling of the brand.
Whatcha wanna bet the CEO and white colar honchos in the offices paid themself a big ol bonus last year, hell prolly this year too, all while cryin about goin out of biz? God dang racket if you ask me.
The brands will be sold off and will continue to me manufactured albeit by the new owners of the brands. The union was beyond stupid to press the compensation issues. I learned early in my career to not work for a private equity owned business. They will squeeze every penny out of a business at the workers expense. That being said, Hostess was about as inefficient as it get due to the unions long term influence. Bread and Twinkies had to be delivered on different trucks even when the originated at the same plant and had the same store destination so the union could keep more drivers on staff. Half full trucks going to the same place....carbon footprint was not the goal of the union! Silly stuff that clearly did not work with private equity ownership. Sad part is the 18K out of work.
That is the funniest damn thing. The union completely shot itself in the foot! They just don't get it - in tough times, you have to give something back. You can't expect to keep raking in the dough [heh heh, I said 'dough'] when the company isn't making any profits.
Well, the union can go think about their stupid decision at Christmas time standing in the unemployment line. Idiots. Hostess will just sell its lines off to someone else.
Greedy bastard teachers here in Ontario are now working to rule, cancelling all their extra-curricular activities like choir and band and football and even the Christmas concerts, to protest the wage freeze imposed on them by the Ontario government. So you don't get to see your daughter be the Sugar Plum Fairy or your son be the Little Drummer Boy. You can forget Baby Jesus, though, too politically incorrect.
Like the teachers are so hard done by! You Merricans would sh|t yourselves if you knew how much we pay our teachers! [who get July, August, Christmas, and spring break off plus every damn holiday you can imagine]
Wait, don't take my word for it - have a look at the pay scale:
That's the collective agreement for Toronto teachers. Scroll down to page 25 and you won't believe your eyes. And you REALLY won't believe your eyes if you see the teachers' pension plan - unbelievable! Man, if you want a cush job, become a teacher in Canada. The only problem is you have to put up with a bunch of little sh|ts every day. Of course, you only have to do it for ten months of the year.
So the teachers are now complaining because they don't get their COLA raise. How many of us self-employed or private sector-employed people ever got a freaking COLA raise?
Greedy greedy greedy. Do the teachers care that the province who pays them is so severely in debt it can't pay its bills? No wonder our countries are going broke!
Greedy bastards. Too bad they can't lock out the teachers.
The teachers went on strike a few years ago. The first week, the public supported them. The second week, after working parents were struggling to find find day care for their kids, the public got pretty damn pissed. Most likely, the public will be pretty pissed about this, too. And so they should be.
I can live without Twinkies, but not those chocolate Hostess Cupcakes with the swirl of white icing across the top! I eat those every morning for breakfast in my portaledge!
Hey Gary,
Agreed....The workers are/were not in charge. Most were low wage earners that likely worked very hard for their income. That being said, their union did them no favors.
Gary...Im not going to get into the union thing here because you either believe Unions are great or you are against unions. My personal belief is that the union is one part of the equation. This business is a failure. Manufacturing low cost and highly perishable products that need to be trucked all around hell and back and then sold in a super competitive market place through retail chains that want to milk every penny they can out of the manufacturer.
Throw on a bunch of private equity debt and a union workforce and it appears the rest is history.
LOL everyone blaming the Union for a boat that is sinking all by itself due to massive debt from 4 leveraged buyouts and inexperienced cheap young MBA dipshit managers on the floor of the facilities. Union coulda disbanded and worked for literally nothing and this company woulda crashed soon anyway. It was planned that way.
It's called vulure capitalism..use a good company to get hands on massive amounts of cash. Pocket said cash.. bankrupt company and sell the pieces for even more cash.
Strange how Sara Lee is doing ok with their Union workers.
When the egghead bankers buy a company, they price their offer depending on what they think they can do to increase profits which is to say increase the company's market value. No doubt baked into their proforma financial model was the assumption they could break the union, and get the workers to pay for the investors profits. Now, with all the other blunders the investors are hurting. Big deal. They'll sell the brands to recoup part of their loss, but I for one am glad the unions stood up to the smug wallstreeters. Yes, individuals will be hurting. But they are also making a statement that the investors will remember. You can't always assume the line employees want to see you get rich at their expense. If you can't manage a business, then get out.
Private Equity rape, lack of capital investment, years bad management, being in a crappy low margi industry, high cost structure, legacy expenses and many more issues lead to the demise of this company. They compete vs other competitors that are both union and non union.
The brands that they own have been actively shopped for sale for years. Competitors will gobble up the brands. Sucks but time to move on.
Was just at the King Soopers....ran into a dude that was pissed they were out of Twinkies. Sold out of their products. They were pretty much sold out of Ding Dongs , Twinkies and other assorted trans fat snacks.
This brand has been circling the drain for years. The name and recipe for twinkees, wonder "bread", ho hos and all that other crap will retain value that the Bainsters will sell off and disperse among the top mgmt.
Don't worry, you'll still be able to get them at some point in time.
I'm of the opinion if you are a union worker you don't work on non union jobs just like us non union guys don't get to work on union jobs.
The day I join a union will go down as one of the most desperate days of my life I don't ever see being that desperate. Plus I feel I should actually work an 8 hour day instead of two breaks a lunch and a bunch of ball cupping union hugging bullshit all day.
Here's a little story about union guy on city center in Vegas.
A union sparky was bragging to us how their contract was basically they had to make up 8 electrical boxes a day. That's it 8 a day and if you got em done in two hours you got a check for a full day because you met the requirement.
That's right your tax dollar bailed those projects out after the unions milked them dry.
Send Harry Ried a thank you note for bailing them out and getting all their votes in return.
Silver, There are two sides and more, to every story, the world is not just black & white..it's shades of grey.
This is not the first time Hostess is filing for bankruptcy ... perhaps there were many reasons... > the company was poorly run, changes in the americans food habits & tastes, competition + Greed on the companies part ..
My father was a Hard working union man....life long Democrat, gun owner, hunter, man of faith, honest, loyal family man who was proud of his country and served in WWII. The union helped provide him with many opportunities that he may have never been able to achieve... he did pretty good for having been a ward of the courts as a 3 year old, put in many foster homes, and having a terrible childhood.
I have been in a union job only only once in my life , and it was the best decision i've ever made. Many good changes came my way. Health insurance and safety issues were front and center.
and no.. i'm not saying unions are perfect.... but.. i bet it was not the union that killed Hostess.
OK, I admit, you anti-union guys are right. Those union goons made me work for more money. They made me take vacations. They even made me get paid more for working overtime. I had health insurance! And the boss couldn't fire me just because he was having a bad day, can you imagine? And what's worse, they made me take a pension so I won't live on cat food and the public dole when I retire.
Contrary to popular opinion, the problem is often not in production or with the unions, or the Mitt Romneys of the world. When companies allow themselves out-of-proportion growth in the administration and management segments...they paradoxically become less manageable.
A top heavy organization propagates too many reporting layers with an unyielding bureaucracy and plethora of contending penpushers uncommitted to the best interests of the business.
Delta has 119 employees per airplane. Southwest Airlines manages with only 69 employees per plane...guess which announces higher profits and revenue growth?
Where are the extra 50 Delta employees? Unlikely you'll find them behind the ticket counter or at the gate. Likely most sit behind computers in administrative offices.
(...fingers crossed I won't offend any administrators reading ST forum from their company computer!)
I'm speaking from a construction point of view not some auto works view state employee view straight up construction. By far the laziest bunch of slacks I ever did see. In fact if you work hard they try to get rid of you as not to make the rest look bad.
The Baker's Union rejected a contract cutting wages and benefits by 27-32 percent. over five years ...and they've made other concessions in recent years.
Despite Hostess claims that labor must make major concessions for the company to survive,Hostess’ CEO got a 300 percent raise, from $750,000 to $2,250,000. Other top executives have also gotten raises of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hostess has had six CEO’s in 8 years, none of whom had any experience in the bread or cake baking industry. The present CEO has been called, by Forbes, a "liquidation specialist"
Do the Wall Street investors that own Hostess have a real interest in the company succeeding?
Or are we witnessing Bain-style vultures make themselves rich while wrecking a major employer? 18,500 jobs could be lost in the process of this liquidation. The CEO and executives who gave themselves raises, and the Wall Street investors, will emerge just fine...while blaming everything on the unions!
.
Jennie, that's pretty much what have been reading...plus this
"Corporate greed at Hostess is destroying the iconic company." . Hal, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurerl, blasted executives for looting Hostess while workers sacrifice, giving up $240 million in concessions and proposing another $1 billion more to save the company.
..
somebody is going to make a ton of money and it's not the Hostess work force...
In my opinion the company failed due to poor management. The unions made huge compromises, management did not. As a business owner I'm aware that if my company fails it is my responsibility, not my workers.
Gonna be pretty funny when they sell the rights to the name and another bakery starts churning out identical Twinkies, and all the people that stockpiled hoping to get rich on ebay are stuck with a pile of out of date baked goods.
In my opinion the company failed due to poor management. The unions made huge compromises, management did not. As a business owner I'm aware that if my company fails it is my responsibility, not my workers.
I agree with this, with an interesting distinction being between the first sentence and last one.
The management in this company were not owners, were they? Wasn't the owner of the company a hedge fund?
OWNERS care about their businesses. Hedge fund managers are not owners of the businesses within their portfolios. Their "company" is simply the money which can be generated out of the resource, the companies they keep.
I looked at the Facebook page of hostess the other day and they had the nerve - raw nerve - to say they were closing DUE TO the strike. What a bunch of carp.
Only a fool would have seen the books on Hostess over the years and not known exactly how this story would play out, and money people generally are not fools. They are like bookies, and sometimes better for the loser makes them the winner.
We support this sort of behavior, overtly and tacitly, by giving our money to these sorts of entities. When someone doesn't understand that, it's one thing. But to be aware of how it works, and continue to support them by buying their goods - that is a choice we make.
In this case, buying the Twinkies is not what I am talking about, but investing in the fund which ate Hostess.
“I think we’ll find buyers,” CEO Gregory F. Rayburn told ABC News on Sunday. ”A few have surfaced already since Friday expressing interest in the brand to acquire them.”
Con Agra and Flowers Foods are among the companies that have expressed interest in Hostess, but Mexican company El Grupo Bimbo may have an edge, the Christian Science Monitor reported Saturday. Grupo Bimbo, headed by Mexican billionaire Daniel Servitje Montull, is the largest bread-baking company in the world.
Economists say part of the reason Hostess struggled was due to high sugar tariffs meant to protect local producers, the Monitor reported. Grupo Bimbo could take advantage of lower sugar prices in Mexico."
It is ironic that the Republicans would be whining about lost jobs as fallout from the great Twinkie failure. An understanding of basic economics would show that consumer dollars normally spent on Twinkies will now be spent on another food product (if you want to call Twinkies food). There is no net loss of jobs, just a shift of jobs to a company that can operate more effeciently. Seems like capitalism doing its job. The only loser is the investor who financed the buyout.
Edit, jobs shifting to Mexico would be a negative effect
There is no net loss of jobs, just a shift of jobs to a company that can operate more effeciently
You're ignoring the important part: the new jobs will be in a company with lower pay and worse employee working conditions and the industry as a whole will be shifted to an expectation of more income for the execs vs. the lowly workers.
I don't like unions, but I think they are a necessary opposing force against corporations. The hope is that these two behemoths, both of which suck, will somehow balance out to something that seems rational and fair and creates jobs with liveable wages and products of reasonable quality and efficiency.
Creditors of Hostess Brands Inc. said in court papers the company may have "manipulated" its executives' salaries higher in the months leading up to its Chapter 11 filing, in what the creditors called a possible effort by Hostess to "sidestep" Bankruptcy Code compensation provisions.
BCTGM International Union President Frank Hurt stated, "The recent claim by Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn that our strike is the reason for the closure of the three bakeries is simply not true. That statement is a continuation of a disturbing pattern by the company of issuing public statements that are erroneous at best and disingenuous at worst.
"Our members rejected the company's outrageous proposal by 92 percent in September. Rejection came from every corner of the country. They were being asked to vote on a proposal with massive concessions, knowing that their plant could very well be one of those to be closed.
"Our members are on strike because they have had enough. They are not willing to take draconian wage and benefit cuts on top of the significant concessions they made in 2004 and give up their pension so that the Wall Street vulture capitalists in control of this company can walk away with millions of dollars."
Over the past eight years since the first Hostess bankruptcy, BCTGM members have watched as money from previous concessions that was supposed to go towards capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment, was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants.
BCTGM members are well aware that as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.
Over the past 15 months, Hostess workers have seen the company unilaterally end contractually-obligated payments to their pension plan. Despite saving more than $160 million with this action, the company continues to fall deeper and deeper into debt. A mountain of debt and gross mismanagement by a string of failed CEO's with no true experience in the wholesale baking business have left this company unable to compete or survive.
Blaming the union is like Capt Edward Smith blaming the iceberg for sinking the Titanic.
Hostess owns 29 brands. This will likely be a classic case of the sum of the parts exceeding the whole.
When was the last time I consumed a product from one of those brands?
The only one I can think of in at least several years is Parisian Bread.
From wikipedia it seems as if the unions have already made concessions
...February 3, 2009.[15] The plan included a 50 percent equity stake by Ripplewood Holdings and lines/loans by General Electric Capital and GE Capital Markets, Silver Point Finance and Monarch Master Funding. Interstate's union workers made contract concessions in exchange for equity
There may be hope for Twinkies after all: Hostess Brands Inc. and its striking union agreed to a mediation that will forestall the company’s planned liquidation for the time being.
At a bankruptcy court hearing Monday in New York, 82-year-old Hostess had planned to ask permission to start shutting down its business. Instead, Judge Robert Drain urged the company and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union to consider mediation.
Both sides agreed to try to work through their conflict, which would preserve more than 18,000 jobs that will otherwise disappear if the Irving, Texas-based company closes its doors. Mediation hearings will begin in private on Tuesday.
Just arrived in the mail is a package from the Bakery Union and Industry Pension Fund. It details the steps being made to get the fund back on firm financial footing.
This includes decreasing the pension pay out. It was already a modest sum. After 30 years in the industry you got $1300 per month. Now it's less.
Hostess was collecting pension funds, but not turning those funds over to the pension board.
They not only screwed over the employees, but their fellow baking companies. The baking companies will now have to increase their contributions 5 to 10% to make up for the shenanigans Hostess pulled.
As a restaurant manager of a busy restaurant that has been using Hostess for more than a decade, I am glad they are gone. It was not my decision to use them but the owners. Over the years I priced out bread products from many other suppliers in an effort to get the owner to move on from Hostess and get better products. Of course the prices and convenience of the Hostess delivery meant we could never change. But last friday our delivery showed up with the info that it would be our last, forever. We know have actual quality products, and I am no longer embarrassed by the Wonder Bread/Twinkie truck parked in front of the restaurant 2 days a week.
Thanks Hostess. I will not miss your products, I will miss the delivery guy, he was cool.
At one time in the very recent past, Continental Baking, the forerunner of the present Hostess, had the largest vehicle fleet in the country besides the military.
When I was at DiCarlo, a subsidiary of Continental, in San Pedro we lost the contract for Carl's Jr. A bakery in Escondido under-bid us. We soon got the work back. The other bakery could make the buns and rolls, but couldn't deliver them in a timely manner.
Let us know!