-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
CEO Gregory Rayburn of Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Ho Ho’s, and Sno Balls, has announced plans to liquidate the 83-year old company. The company is in its second bankruptcy in a decade. Hostess sold about $2.5 billion worth of snack products last year with Twinkies leading the pack. However, the company has nearly $1 billion in debt and has $2 billion in unfunded pension obligations.
About 18,000 jobs are at stake. The unionized employees are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). BCTGM in September rejected a last, best and final offer from Hostess and went out on strike.
While Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn was planning to ask his employees for wage and benefit concessions, he was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000). Nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises.
Over the eight years since the first bankruptcy, Hostess employees 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 stated that “Our members are on strike because they have had enough.” The union’s members voted 92% to reject the company’s “best and final offer.”
Hostess plans to sell its most popular brands like Twinkies, CupCakes, Ding Dongs, Ho Ho’s, Sno Balls, and Donettes. In the mean time, Hostess products are flying off store shelves.
Competitors like Bimbo Bakeries USA (pronounced “Beembo”), also employing union workers and the largest bakery corporation in the US, may be a likely purchaser of some of the Hostess brands.
H/T: LGM, Think Progress, Policy Mic, Sacremento Bee, WSJ, Courthouse News.
EGT,
Counting the warts and ticks on the rhinoceros and forgetting its size, are you?
I saw in fact no irony, bur saw that it stopped TonyC, which is always good.
I in fact returned to my original argument which being the rhinoceros that you ignore. I used the irony as a signature tease in order to make Bron happy and TonyC sad.
Do much puppet work for GeneH? Your label is showing.
Exclusive: Sun Capital wants to buy Hostess
“I think that we could offer a slightly better, more labor-friendly deal than what was on the table last week,” says Sun co-CEO Marc Leder, in an interview with Fortune. “We also think that one point the unions have made is that there hasn’t been a great amount of reinvestment in the business. We’ve found that investing new capital into companies like this can be very positive for brand, people and profitability… We would look to invest in newer, more modern, manufacturing assets that would enable the company to become more productive and to innovate.”
Tony C. asks, Where is the Irony?
There was none.
Bron and idealist707 are making a common figurative language mistake.
Irony is intentional and most often used as a vehicle of wit. Naming a large Greyhound dog Tiny is ironic. Irony is a wink at oneself, a situation, or others.
TonyC,
You say that you demand no respect for your feelings, implying that I had. Not true as to my feelings.
I need no respect for them, I instead asked you to use fair debating techniques by not using me in the manner previously described.
You, on the other hand, by listing your previous merits, demand that others defer to them, instead of meeeting you fair and square with an exchange of ideas and diseecting and meriting them with objective evidence.
You don’t even know what discussion and argueing means.
Your technique has served you well, but I won’t yield to it here.
Oh, the irony! Indeed, indeed.
Yes, Bron, it is ironic indeed.
AND, he has adopted the last defense of bullies:
“I can not concern myself about your feelings and devote my time to accomodate them.”
Secondly, he climbs the high ground by saying clearly
that HE has higher goals to achieve and address his time to here than cóncerning himself with not offending people. The claims on him in the name of respect, etc are flatly denied.
Very self-revealing.
Not worth arguing with. The motivation behind his skit is now revealed.
@Bron: I fail to see the irony. To my recollection I have never demanded that you be careful of my feelings, or pay “proper respect” to me. Respect for reality is one thing; respect for ME is not a prerequisite to follow any of my arguments.
So where is the irony?
oh, the irony.
“Your “remedy” is a demand that I do more work and take more care with your hurt feelings. That is a selfish demand that puts your feelings above MY time and MY feelings; it is an inherently unfair demand for deference or subordination, in the name of “proper respect,” that I find offensive and reject in its entirety.”
Oh, the irony of that statement.
@Idealist: Your “remedy” is a demand that I do more work and take more care with your hurt feelings. That is a selfish demand that puts your feelings above MY time and MY feelings; it is an inherently unfair demand for deference or subordination, in the name of “proper respect,” that I find offensive and reject in its entirety.
What you write on this blog is fair game; if I want to use your statements as proof of foolish thinking I will, if I want to expound upon them to expose the deeper flaws that often give rise to such thinking I will. I do not write to please you, I write to shine a light on bad reasoning and thinking as I see it, because I find that both entertaining and, in some cases, I believe that viewpoint can help others to see things in the different light I provide.
If you are offended that your statement provided the example of flawed thinking I chose to critique, and served as the launch pad for a more general analysis, so be it. I cannot control the feelings of the hundreds that post or read here; if I strove to offend nobody then nothing could be said; and I see no valid reason to single you out for exceptional treatment.
What’s a paradox is…. They legal recreational marijuana one week and twinkies files bankruptcy the next……
NIckS,
I have never GeneH mention what he does IRL.
Neither any part of a private sphere.
Whether he shares with any others here is a maybe.
He makes references as assertions to his being an suthority on Louisiana, etc.
Work, no. Avocation: Alpha hound.
TonyC
Now you sound like someone who pretends to reason.
Actually seldom seen you do such a reasonable thing.
For the fun of It:
I wrote in extenso explaining how I found you behavior overstepped the grounds of proper respect and not using debate techniques which take liberties with me—either casting me in the position of a tacit support of new points or as an opponent to new points.
I simply asked you for the remedy of replying to my points in one comment and then posting you new ideas in another comment.
You refused. I asked why, and received an abusive reply, with no actual argument.
So in my separate comments, I simplified it by saying that you put words in my mouth, which in practice is
what you do.
As for inferring, TonyC. I don’t need to. Practically all you write is carefully prefaced with bona fides which prove that you are better at knowing the subject under discussion than the person you are engaging in what is nominally a discussion, but instead is a session of browbeating and showing off for you egos sake.
As for inferring insults, I have no recall of any, however “von oben” type formulations are very easy to detect and decipher. I do so but don’t bother about them.
So continuing to argue on the basis of what my one sentence summary is poor grounds to continue.
I offered you my extended version and you ignore it with a one word answer: “NO”
That describes you and your attitude here.
That you have knowledge does not grant you position as an authority not to be subject to the questions.
Remember that and it will go better.
I found this site that’s trying to save them!!! http://www.savemytwinkies.com/
@Idealist: I never put words in your mouth; in fact that is you accusing me of the crime you commit, because I never claimed to be the biggest mind in any business, either. You seem to have an inference problem; inferring slights to yourself where there are none, and inferring assertions of superiority where none was ever implied.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffdCVjH-Q3k
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffdCVjH-Q3k&w=420&h=315%5D
ID, You’re very observant. When Gino goes over the top, or jumps the shark, he then starts schmoozing his followers in Wonderland Middle School. It’s like an alcoholic who is fawniing after a night of debauchery, making sure his enablers are still on board. And, I surmise that’s not a metaphor. What do you know about his work experience?
Nick,
The only thing you get from casting stones at Mount Everest is an avalanche in return. Not much to learn of that.
Now the way to Gene’s heart is by kissing his a55hole and entering that way. I never could stomach that.
But many here do. Sharing the top perch with him is what their egos need. The only problem is that it scares off ordinary people, even people who would have something to give here.
Last words.
NickS,
Just my style. Just a feel for food, spices and start at the base. I cheat a little with readymade Pecorino and tomatoe sauce sometimes, and such like.
Yesterday it was potatoe, onion, leeks, garlic, chicken boullion, chili powder, parsley, french herbs, etc.
Don’t worry about GeneH and TonyC. Someday their egos will explode. Until then regard it as the rain, it comes and goes. Why do you feel that you have to defeat them? They are self-admirers. Both write well and learnedly, and GeneH has the heart of a vulture.
He spouts like a Washington fountain, but nary a solution in sight.
Always polishing his rep and smelling the a55es of his followers to be sure they are in stiil farting on his command.
I asked TonyC why he could not stop putting words in my mouth. He says that he can do as he wishes and go screw. That’s what you get when you say against the greatest mind in business, he thinks.
Woo hoo, the idiots of self-acclaim ride again.
GeneH cussed me out for dissing his favo Cowboy movie.
You know one of those with the guy who talks to empty chairs in front of thousands of people and the national TV. GeneH thinks he is Dog. Or king, but we don’t have those anymore.
Fun to make fun of them. Their words are instructive at times, but seldom lead anywhere.
Nighty night Nick.
Tony,
Exactly.
********************
nick,
For a guy who thinks he’s an expert on reading people, you clearly don’t understand me in the slightest. You don’t know me or know what I do yet you are perfectly willing to try to assert some kind of ethical superiority over me in a sad display of seeking the approval of complete strangers. All of this because when I’ve previously challenged your statements on logical and evidentiary grounds and the best you can respond with is usually emotionalism and ad hominem.
Your opinion of me is meaningless, nick.
I don’t seek the approval of others except for a very few select others.
Sorry you don’t make that cut and that you haven’t figured that out about me yet.
But if you don’t like me giving you a lot of shit, maybe you should consider that I’m real big on the Ethic of Reciprocity. That or buckle up. It’ll be a bumpy ride. Just because you aren’t a recipient of my kindness doesn’t mean I’m not kind. I tend to give what I get when I’m not just giving for the sake of giving. Maybe you should learn that about me. You aren’t learning proof, no matter how resistant you are. But I could be wrong about that.
Gene, You do have emotions, but they seem to be mostly negative ones. And those negative emotions control your life, disguised as self professed supreme logic and argumentation skils. It would be sad if it weren’t so self destructive and mean. Maybe volunteer to help kids in school. My wife does and finds it satisfying. I don’t like public schools so I volunteer @ a community center that helps kids in an after school program. It’s great to come out from within yourself. Share your intellect, that is if you like kids as we do. If you don’t like kids..please don’t ever work w/ them. Find some people you like and use your time you have to help your community. Just a suggestion. Volunteering isn’t for everyone however, that is your decision. But, I’ve seen skeptical people volunteer w/ kids, seniors, etc. and love it. And I’ve also seen the opposite.