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Your thoughts on the hostess union turning down the final deal
Under the Hostess proposal, the details of which were provided to Fortune on an anonymous basis, Hostess employees, including management, would have the following concessions.
- Wages immediately cut 8% but then raised 3% in the next year of a five-year contract.
- Employer contributions for health insurance would decrease 17% and Employee contributions would go up by 17%.
- Contributions to multi-employer pension plans would cease until 2015, at which point the current required level of funding would plummet from $100 million to $25 million.
- 25% Equity stake and 2 seats on a restructured board.
Union Leaders from the Confectionary, bakers, and tabacco workers union said they could not accept this deal
while leaders from the teamsters accepted the deal.
This caused 36 bakeries to close and a loss of 18,500 jobs.
Average baker at hostess with 20 years experience was 45,000
My current day time job pays me 30,000 a year and if it meant having a job or not having a job I would have taken the 3600 dollar a year pay cut easily. Just my thoughts that union heads are idiots.
Comments
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/4319/the-cest-pit
:P
@jarland I think this one desrves it's own thread. Cause I am pissed at these people.
They'll get on unemployment and make a killing, meanwhile they'll be able to turn down jobs that don't pay as much as their previous job and keep drawing unemployment. I believe that is a newer provision to the unemployment requirements (I know it's 75% of previous wages in Texas). It's a win-win for the selfish among us.
Even if that isn't true in their state, yeah I agree. In this economy, knowing that you're working for a company that was previously poorly managed, you should be proud to have a job that pays significantly more than the cost of living. However, I understand that cost of living is somewhat relative. You'll have to cut back on that anyway if you can't find another job soon. The company was attempting to restructure to fix the poor management, and employees who want to keep their job should be respectful of that in my opinion. It's a question of would you rather patch up the ship and deal with some hardships or would you rather hop off it and let it sink? If you don't have another ship lined up to climb aboard, I'd think the first.
@jarland Damn you liberals!!!!!!
Fixed that for you.
Spelling fail Pie
Nope i think I had it right to begin with!
Spelling fail? I see someone ninja edited it but it wasn't so ninja-y!
Ehh, lets put it this way. Do you prefer Federal Government having power or the State Governments having power.
Personally for me, especially with a company this big, I'd prefer having the Federal Government work with such a large company in order to come to an agreement, but then again this is a free market and Hostess can do whatever they want (including close down).
But then again, This does belong in The Cest Pit.
Well it is in my opinion not a political issue. My comment was because of what @jarland stated. My issue is more with the heads of the union. You know that people loose thier jobs if it is not approved, how can they sleep with themselves at night when they just put 7000 people out of work that approved it on thier side.
The government shouldn't be able to tell a company to do anything on this point. This is where unions have gotten stupid. If the company is loosing money and your not going to take concessions to keep your job a float your an idiot.
They have no business interfering with the market in such ways. If you keep holding the hand of poorly run companies, you won't have 18,000 people to hire for the beginning of a new company. Eventually old things have to die, new things have to rise. All the buzz words, progress, forward thinking, etc. often require the death of the old. You can't cling to the irrelevant and move forward. A poorly run business needs to die to make a hole in the market for someone else to fill. If it's death doesn't make a hole in the market then there was no significant demand for it's product or services.
Certainly 18,000 people won't be hired by a company that replaces the poorly run one, but perhaps the 18,000 jobs were a result of poorly managing the company to begin with. Companies do not exist to provide jobs. They exist to create and/or meet a demand. Jobs are an intentional and desired side effect.
@24khost
In regards to you taking a 3600 wage cut. The union knows that if they say "no" and all workers agree, the new owners of hostess are not giong to retrain / train x amount of thousands of employees (training costs up the wazoo!) then to just give the workers better agreements. 17% lower Medical and 17% higher contributions is stupid.
@jarland this company shouldn't be dying though. Part of it is ownership and part of it is union, and the other part is pride. And both of them are letting pride get in the way.
I think I could have solved this. Here is the deal I would have offered.
1.Wages immediately cut 5% but then raised 3% in the next year of a five-year contract.
2.Employer contributions for health insurance would decrease 20% and Employee contributions would go up by 20%.
3.Contributions to multi-employer pension plans would cease. They would then enter in to a 401k front loaded with thier pention amounts the already have + 20%.
4. 30% stake in the company and the 2 seats on the board.
That's why I honestly think everyone here was doing what they thought was best. It sucks, both sides have something to complain about from the other. In the end, this company probably needed to fall. I hate that, especially this close to the holidays, but life isn't always fair. Now there are 18,000 people, I bet a decent number of them once said "I could run a company better." Well, now, maybe one of them will. In 20 years all of them could be better off...or maybe not. It's hard to say, but the potential is there.
New owners means new rules. Non-union shop, with lower wages most likley.
ooh and i forgot to mention in my last post a 3700 cut in total employees and closing 4 bakeries. Cuting under performing lines
Went on strike and eliminated their own jobs.... brilliant!
I had a union job for about like 18 months and probably worked there like less than 10 times. If you're absolutely pathetic and lazy, go work for a union. The only way you could ever get fired from a job is like if you killed somebody. That's about it. If you're on recreational drugs, get a prescription and pop all those pills to your delight while on the job.
Oh yeah, this was a federal security overseen type job too at a "secure facility" = gate propped wide open with a high school graduate "security guard" asleep with one of those neck pillows so she doesn't mess her hair up. Plus when they made security all tight you had to wave a badge to get in and out. Well now, just wave a badge to get in and on the way out with the 3 guys that swam off the boat you just loaded, they can just lay down in the back seat or hide in the trunk. This is a "TSA" ran facility too. Homeland security is nothing more than homeland security theater or an adult version of kids pretending to be police.
I didn't work for the government but I worked for a company that had contracts with the federal government. I've seen lazy union people drag a cooler on wheels in a parking lot to sit on while making $20+ an hour scanning bar codes on cars.
I heard almost 3 years ago that a Hostess vendor was saying they were having issues, a strike was eminent and they were stockpiling in case it happened. Boy was he right
@bamn where is the damn thanks button when i need it
Ah well in my opinion, unions crippled and still cripple the growth of the UK. We still haven't really recovered from the strikes in the 70s/80s and every 5 minutes it seems the public sector/teachers are on strike. People are lazy and can't see further than their own noses.
Same with people complaining about no jobs, it is total crap. My brother currently has 3 jobs in the retail industry, 2 of which he's started this year. Jobs are there, but people only want the glamorous ones.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/24/news/economy/trucking-jobs/index.htm
Let them go out of business. People aren't buying snack cakes, Hostess didn't need to fill entire multiple end-caps of grocery stores. Business model isn't working anymore? Why not change it, instead of frantically grasping for life seconds before drowning?
(this comes from a guy who's not that big on an "save the planet", too...)
Getting to be about as ridiculous as people bashing Mitt Romney for stating that he was going to cut funding to a puppet show Sesame Street.
Well they were going to give them exactly what they want a chance to help fix the problem. Problem is they didn't want to fix the problem. If the company isn't making money than there is nothing you can do except either ask your employees to help by taking a pay cut and keeping them working or shut it down. I would choose to keep working.
@jarland There are as many as 200,000 job openings nationwide for long haul truckers
Wanna guess one of my jobs in the last 10 years? Here is a job for the lazies
At the union job I spoke of, trucks came in and out all the time. Except one problem, the TWIC mandate on truck drivers who are not usually the most law abiding citizens will disqualify them from TWIC certification and prevent them from working near TSA/TWIC facilities. Even misdemeanors, like an open alcohol container as a passenger in a car, can disqualify you from a TWIC badge.
In other words, truck drivers are hurting because TSA/TWIC money is quick, easy money so they have to go long hauling
It's even worse if they're HME's too. I'm surprised anyone's able to get a TWIC with HME endorsement...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause