NBCDFW: Twinkies Maker Hostess Going Out of Business, CEO Blames Union Strike

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/NATL-Twinkies-Maker-Hostess-Going-Out-of-Business-179643161.html

Wow.

They leaglize pot in Washington State and Colarado, and now they'll be no twinkies?!?! Blasphemous!

crap someone tell Tallahassee

Hard to survive in today's market with a ****ty product.

Sucks that management and the unions could not come to some sort of agreement. Seems silly on the union side, but obviously I don't know the details. I do wonder how long they would have survived anyhow, the article mentions that they had a lot of financial troubles in addition to the labor.

When you have a company cutting wages and benefits for a union it's difficult to judge whether or not that's because the company is really in big trouble or they're trying to be cheap with their employees. In this case the baker's union gambled that it was a ploy and it appears that they've lost...sort of. The hostess company will undoubtedly be absorbed in pieces or as a whole by some other major food producer. The question is whether the new company will be interested in keeping a bunch of employees who were striking and contributed to the death of the company which they just absorbed, or if they'll want to fill the vacancies with their own people.

For the union and the employees who were counting on having a job with hostess it seems like they really ended up shooting themselves in the foot.

I would liken it to a guy who was staying with our family one summer and interning at a local business. It was the same business at which my sister in law worked, and she agreed to have this guy carpool with her to work. Gas prices rose quickly and pretty high that year and she went to the guy (who was a colossal idiot) and she said "look, I'm going to need you to pay for half of the gas going to and from work if you're going to be riding with me" he said "that isn't fair, I'm not paying for it now, why should I have to?? You make more money than I do anyway, you can afford it" to which my sister in law replied "yeah, but you're getting a free ride right now. If you don't pay me half of the gas costs I'll stop going out of my way to carpool with you and I'll just enjoy driving to work by myself in peace".

So in the end the guy came to the conclusion that she should have to pay for the gas, and he didn't think he should have to pay 50%. He ended up paying 100% on gas when he inevitably had to drive to work himself. The irony and stupidity of this was lost on him.

It sounds like they were doomed regardless of any sort of union strike.

Also, from reading elsewhere it sounds like the company had stopped paying out pensions for a few years and the union wanted them to disclose what they were doing with the money, but Hostess declined to do so which lead to the pissing off the union even more.

Sucks, but that's business for you.

I'd assume that some companies will buy Hostesses more notable brands so the junk food junkies won't lose everything.

18,500 jobs lost. Holy crap.

All of a sudden I want a Twinkie.

Chris Christie declares a state of emergency.

(Compliments to fake cnn and others on twitter)

You'll still get twinkies etc. They will just now be made in China. With extra lead.

And the 18k union employees will be SOL.

sad, sure, but let's get real: twinkies are garbage.

I don't eat them anymore, but I used to love them orange cupcakes.

When a company fails, Unions will blame the management and the management will blame the Unions... Some people will agree with the Unions while other people will agree with the management.

Now does anybody know what actually happened there?

Chris Christie declares a state of emergency.

(Compliments to fake cnn and others on twitter)

Now, that's funny!

Somewhere Newman is crying.

That's the only Hostess product I've ever liked. Tastycake is king

You'll still get twinkies etc. They will just now be made in China. With extra lead.

And the 18k union employees will be SOL.

Agreed.

Heck, they've got enough preservatives in them, they could ship them by camel and not have a problem.

When a company fails, Unions will blame the management and the management will blame the Unions... Some people will agree with the Unions while other people will agree with the management.

Now does anybody know what actually happened there?

Yes

Hostess is in bankruptcy and the court ordered reductions in pay...the union went on strike,despite it not being the companies decision.

Hope they find a job since they obviously don't want that one

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-16/twinkies-ding-dongs-maker-hostess-liquidates-following-failure-resolve-labor-union-a

Poor Andy Reid can't catch a break this year. He's probably losing his job with the Eagles and now Twinkies are going away too.

-from the faux John Madden twitter account

This just in: Little Debbie gloating, drunk and completely obnoxious today. Just keeps repeating "I got your Twinkie right here."

It sounds like they were doomed regardless of any sort of union strike.

Also, from reading elsewhere it sounds like the company had stopped paying out pensions for a few years and the union wanted them to disclose what they were doing with the money, but Hostess declined to do so which lead to the pissing off the union even more.

Hostess has been in bad shape for a long time. They went bankrupt back in 2004, and again last year. The union thing is just the straw breaking the camel's back. They won't be able to recover from this to the point they can go bankrupt again. They'll have to liquidate this time.

Hostess has been in bad shape for a long time. They went bankrupt back in 2004, and again last year. The union thing is just the straw breaking the camel's back. They won't be able to recover from this to the point they can go bankrupt again. They'll have to liquidate this time.

How may lives have those brave union members saved? Hard to say, but I salute their sacrifice for their fellow man.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38872091/ns/today-food/t/ingredients-twinkie-eaters-ingest/#.UKZyYeQ0WSo

37 ingredients Twinkie eaters ingest

More, including a fun pictorial, at link. Plus, I noted this comment at bottom of page:

I was doing fine reading through all the ingredients until I saw they included at least three derivatives from Soy. Soy will sterilize males, and this is just another left-wing feminist conspiracy to destroy us males.

Now I know where LSF worked! :evilg:

I was listening to the radio on the way in from work today, and the person calling in was a Hostess salesman/distributer. He said that the company had been bought by a hedge fund, they had spent the last few years cutting back and selling off pieces of the company, and that they decided that the real estate of the various Hostess factories and offices was worth much more than the company as an ongoing business. Blaming it on the union is just an excuse for completing what they had been doing all along. I do know that Hostess had a large bakery here in San Francisco on Potrero Hill, and that it was closed and sold to developers a couple of years ago. :whoknows:

I don't know what the real answer is, but I thought I should throw that out there. It's just as reliable as a shamelessly biased article from the zerohedge.com blog.