Bakers on strike

Re:Bakers on strike (MetroplexJim)

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:44:17 GMT

Dr of BBQ

Michael,
That may not be true. I'm betting someone will buy the brand name company etc. Then reopen it as a non union shop. Of course when they do the union members will picket them with signs that will read: You have a scab on your ding dong!
Or Think of it this way the former employees are not going to have a Ho Ho Ho merry xmas this year. LOL

Who is the remarkably courageous "masked spam detector" here?

Does he fear scabs on his Ding-Dong?

(Good one, kind Dr.)

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:14:17 GMT

http://auctionhq.com/eventtags/goindustry-dovebid/

Re:Bakers on strike (Kokomo_Sno)

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:48:25 GMT

I have purchased a few Hostess trucks. They're not as roomy or tall as the Frito Lay trucks. If I recall correctly, the Hostess trucks I had used a roll up door whereas Frito Lay has swing doors. I prefer the swing doors.

You could see if your local Hostess plant will sell you a truck, otherwise all the trucks are sold via auction through Dovebid as far as I know. Can't post a link, but Google that and then on the right hand side of website scroll down to Transportation.

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:36:29 GMT

I had not thought of that before but your most likely right. But will they be local, offered on line, or in a mass sale at the home office? And most will be of the 16 foot models which don't offer a ton of room. And I promise that's true having worked out of a 16 foot trailer for the last 8 plus years. When my trailer was empty and I was doing the wiring and plumbing it was enormous but now it's a cracker box. LOL

Re:Bakers on strike (Kokomo_Sno)

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:26:23 GMT

Sounds like some step vans will be coming up for auction soon.

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:32:20 GMT

Hostess's owners have decided to liquidate rather than ride out a nationwide strike by one of the largest of its dozen unions. On Friday it shut down its 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers and prepared to fire nearly 18,500 employee. Hostess posted sales of $2.5 billion in 2011 but lost $341 million.

One reason is a labor-rule burden that by comparison makes Detroit look like Hong Kong. The snack giant endured $52 million in workers' comp claims in 2011, according to its bankruptcy filing this January. Hostess's 372 collective-bargaining agreements required the company to maintain 80 different health and benefit plans, 40 pension plans and mandated a $31 million increase in wages and health care and other benefits for 2012.

Union work rules usually required cake and bread products to be delivered to a single retail location using two separate trucks. Drivers weren't allowed to load their own vehicles, and the workers who loaded bread weren't allowed to load cake. On most delivery routes, another "pull up" employee moved products from back rooms to shelves.

This year management negotiated concessions from some of the unions, including the Teamsters, but the bakers rejected a last and best offer in September. Then the courts gave Hostess unilateral authority to modify collective-bargaining contracts, prompting the strike. So now it will liquidate, instead of attempting to emerge from Chapter 11 intact.

The 18,500 layoffs are equal to about 11% of the net new jobs the entire U.S. economy created in October. The unions are blaming private equity, or Bain Capital, or capitalism, but the election is over. And so is Hostess

Re:Bakers on strike (Tristan225)

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:25:22 GMT

oqanani

Yet another reason Unions suck

Or Not!
Maybe these people should just have kept rolling over until they made a dollar a day. Then they would really be able to go out to eat at your place. The unions already made $110 million per year in concessions but that wasn't enough. Through inept management they lost $341 million last year and rewarded the CEO with a 300% pay raise(no doubt taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%). They chanced CEO's 6 times in 10 years. This place was closing anyway after being leveraged beyond repair by the private equity firm that owned it and couldn't pay off the loan from the money it borrowed during the first bankruptcy in 04.
I don't know your tolerance for pain but I would be pissed too watching management suck my workplace dry (including the/my pension fund) and then walking away scott free.
There's a little more to it than blaming the union. Nice talking point though- and the chickens keep following Colonel Saunders.

Re:Bakers on strike (jcheese)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:39:10 GMT

Bad timing....Legalize Pot, Twinkies vanish.

Re:Bakers on strike (Hepcat)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:01:06 GMT

Dr of BBQ

Saps your right no doubt but we need some, no make that a lot of jobs in this country. And they can't all be service connected jobs. We need somehow or another to get back to being a production country not just a consumer country.

That is correct. But the problem is how.

Now time and time again when discussing this issue you will hear people say "I'll buy American made products everytime so long as I can find the same product competitively priced." Well that's the crux of the problem. American made goods in general will not be competitively priced since wage rates in the States are so much higher. Therefore if the American consumer as a group refuses to pay up for American made goods, the manufacturing base of the United States will continue to be hollowed out until unemployment soars so high that wage rates drop to third world levels. That's going to be the fruit of the American consumer having chosen cheap goods at Wal-Mart over goods made by one time American institutions such as Zenith, Admiral, Westinghouse, Kelvinator, Philco, Firestone, etc, etc.

Re:Bakers on strike (oqanani)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:53:50 GMT

Yet another reason Unions suck

Re:Bakers on strike (Hepcat)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:34:37 GMT

That's very sad. Another American institution gone.

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:57:22 GMT

Michael,
That may not be true. I'm betting someone will buy the brand name company etc. Then reopen it as a non union shop. Of course when they do the union members will picket them with signs that will read: You have a scab on your ding dong!
Or Think of it this way the former employees are not going to have a Ho Ho Ho merry xmas this year. LOL

Re:Bakers on strike (Michael Hoffman)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:23:27 GMT

And I shall no longer be able to enjoy my favorite sweet treat ever -- Devil Dogs. It is a sad day.

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:28:25 GMT

Twinkies Maker Will Close After Strike
Nov. 16, 2012

Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of the iconic snack, announced today that it will liquidate the entire company because not enough striking employees returned to work by a Thursday evening deadline set by the company.

"We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," said Gregory F. Rayburn, chief executive officer. "Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders."

Hostess said it will seek bankruptcy court permission to close its business and sell its assets, "including its iconic brands and facilities. Bakery operations have been suspended at all plants."

"The Board of Directors authorized the wind down of Hostess Brands to preserve and maximize the value of the estate after one of the Company's largest unions, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), initiated a nationwide strike that crippled the Company's ability to produce and deliver products at multiple facilities," the company said in a statement.

The wind down means the closure of 33 bakeries, 565 distribution centers, approximately 5,500 delivery routes and 570 bakery outlet stores throughout the United States, the company said.

ABC News' David Wright and Alex Stone contributed to this report.

Re:Bakers on strike (Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:12:23 GMT

Yeah, I sure wish we could go back to the mid-1800s. Those were the days.

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:50:13 GMT

I'll tell you something strange: In the south in the mid 1800s years before the war between the states the battle cry wasn't slavery it was to reduce taxes, to limit the growth of the federal government, to curb or eliminate harmful protectionist trade policies, to impose fiscal responsibility on federal spending, to abolish the corrupt United States Bank, to preserve our free banking system, to prohibit the use of tax dollars for wasteful corporate welfare schemes, to expand the land area of the United States by acquiring new territory, to preserve the sovereignty of the states, and to enforce a strict interpretation of the Constitution." And then the war started and all that was forgotten. I wish as a country we had that same battle cry today.
jack

Re:Bakers on strike (Ice Cream Man)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:13:45 GMT

Global market, cheap labour.
You have 330,000,000 customers but no jobs.
Blame it on the unions, that's the rich mans line he's got you convince you're to expensive. Not just the US but Canada and Europe too. Build it in China they have no unions, build it cheap sell it to the US, Canada and Europe. Oh wait they have no jobs and no money. What now, sell it to the Chinese, they have no unions, so they have no money. The world economy crashes, the rich man has money and government bail outs. The workers demonstrate it turns into riots, already happening in Europe. How long do you think China will keep lending money to the US and Canada before they cut us off.

Re:Bakers on strike (FriedClamFanatic)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 22:08:22 GMT

No more Twinkies!.until someone that has distribution rights has them made in China.shipped here by a Liberian Tanker..ofloaded by stevedores of whatever union, trucked to stores by teamsters, and stocked on the shelves by the local Grocery Union

Wonders where all the costs go

Bur.DR.you are right...........If we don't make something..........grow something.....or pull something outta the ground.......we no longer have an economy. Just a bunch of pensioned Gov't employees standing by and watching it all sink

Re:Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:19:44 GMT

Saps your right no doubt but we need some, no make that a lot of jobs in this country. And they can't all be service connected jobs. We need somehow or another to get back to being a production country not just a consumer country.
jack

Re:Bakers on strike (saps)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:14:26 GMT

China doesn't have all of the jobs. The whole reason our auto industry got into trouble was because of our protectionist stance and the Japanese cleaned Detroit's clock. We live in a global economy, but a lot of people just don't understand the most effective use of resources. If American companies didn't move some of their production to foreign areas with lower labor rates, the companies wouldn't exist at all- they wouldn't be able to compete with other lower cost producers.

Re:Bakers on strike (Ice Cream Man)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:25:15 GMT

Canada and the US have dug themselves a big hole, we don't have enough good jobs left to buy local goods so the companies who have stayed or have to produce here have customers who are broke. They cut wages and benefits to survive but that will only last a short while longer. A long time ago buy in your own country was a battle cry that people ignored now China has all the jobs.
Look up the Canadian and American trade deficits it'll make you sick.
Enjoy this time while you can because if our governments don't do something soon we will be the third world country's.
China just bought a new aircraft carrier with our money I wonder what they are planing to do with that.

Re:Bakers on strike (ann peeples)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:04:57 GMT

This is their 2nd bankruptcy, and what you have posted is true( my cousin worked for Hostess, and his father-in-law is an executive)If the bakers dont concede to a pay cut by 5:00pm today, Hostess will shut their doors.

Bakers on strike (Dr of BBQ)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:30:30 GMT

Did you guys know that all the bakers are on strike at Hostess, Wonder Bread and another (can't remember name) company? The companies have told them (the bakers) to come back to work by 5:00 PM today or they will close the companies. Close all 3 companies WOW! I'm not sure how big an area is effected but Springfield stores are getting low on stock. And the local day old stores are out of product.
Jack
here is an update
BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Twinkie maker Hostess Brands is threatening to liquidate the company if striking bakers do not return to work by the end of Thursday, according to CNN Money. "We simply do not have the financial resources to survive an ongoing national strike," Hostess Chief Executive Officer Greg Rayburn said in a statement cited by CNN. The bakers union, which represents about 5,000 of the bankrupt company's 18,000 workers, is on strike to protest a new contract imposed by the bankruptcy court that calls for an immediate 8% salary cut, along with reductions in pension obligations and company contributions to employee health-care plans. In exchange, the Wonder Bread maker would begin to bump up salaries after one year and give workers a 25% equity stake in the company. Hostess filed for bankruptcy protection in January.

And another
The maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread said Monday that the strike has prevented it from producing and delivering products, and it is closing bakeries in Seattle, St. Louis and Cincinnati. The facilities employ 627 workers.
Hostess, based in Irving, Texas, operates 36 bakeries nationwide and has about 18,300 employees. It warned earlier this month that the strike, by about 30 percent of its workforce, could lead to bakery closures.

"We deeply regret this decision, but we have repeatedly explained that we will close facilities that are no longer able to produce and deliver products because of a work stoppage - and that we will close the entire company if widespread strikes cripple our business," Hostess Brands CEO Gregory F. Rayburn said.

Hostess said customers will not be affected by the closures.

A representative for the union could not be reached immediately for comment Monday.

Thousands of members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike Nov. 9 to protest cuts to wages and benefits under a new contract offer, which the union rejected in September. Union officials say the company stopped contributing to workers' pensions last year.

Hostess has argued that workers must make concessions as it tries to improve its financial position. The privately-held food maker filed for Chapter 11 protection in January, its second trip through bankruptcy court in less than a decade. Hostess cited increasing pension and medical costs for employees as one of the drivers behind its latest filing.

The company, founded in 1930, is fighting battles beyond labor costs, however. Competition is increasing in the snack space and Americans are increasingly conscious about healthy eating.