You'd think that with the popularity of their products and their cultural significance, they would have been doing better than they really were...
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You'd think that with the popularity of their products and their cultural significance, they would have been doing better than they really were...
This is, unfortunately, what happens eventually with many unions. I'm not saying unions are 100% bad, as they certainly have their place. But with any company, I can see how it happens. Costs are rising, especially energy and shipping, health care, liability insurance, and in many states minimum wage increases. Add on that the unions with mandated additional benefits, additional health care, and seemingly unlimited retirement benefits. It's not hard to imagine even a once extremely strong company being squeezed to death like this.
On the good side of things, it appears that there may be more talks and possibly the union will give some concessions to keep their tens of thousands of workers employed during the holidays. The fat, twinkie eating, lady may not have sung yet.
This whole story pisses me off. I don't see how this country could allow unions to destroy a company like Hostess. I just don't get why they can't fire the union and hire regular joes. The stupid union rules were killing the company. For example, when loading up the trucks they had specific union people for certain tasks. The guy who loaded sweets could not be the guy who loaded bread too, they had to be different! And the truck driver was not allowed to help at all!
Three people to do the job that one could!!
all i can hope for out of this debacle is that more people will become aware of how fat and bloated the unions are. and realize the points tlharrell and tgs made.
one of my jobs has been to build and test and repair the power supplies for the robot paint sprayers in car factories. when we would send equipment and personnel to install OUR equipment, we were not even allowed to touch it. only the union electricians were allowed to touch it. so, the boss would have to wait an hour for the electrician to show up, then another half hour for him to take a coffee break, then about 5 minutes of work, then a 2 hour lunch, etc. , etc. he would come back to the office totally pissed off because of the serious lack of work the union electricians did. and all he could do was sit and watch, which of course cost our company a days pay.
My grandpa worked out at hanford, and they had equipment for extracting and testing nuclear material that was designed and cost a ton of money. They were testing the equipment and something wasn't working. My grandpa saw a loose wire, so he pulled out a screwdriver and set the wire again. His co-workers said he wasn't allowed to do it because it had to be done by an electrician. He told them that they were welcome to go out to the truck and phone their boss to complain, but that he was going to get their dangerous nuclear work finished as fast as possible.