Bye bye Twinkies and Ding Dongs

[quote="ferret"]Sweetie Pie, I was BORN in England...my parents CHOSE Canada 'cuz that's where my Dad, as an Electrical Engineer, could find work. End story...but I don't think a twinkie would have made an iota of difference in their decision.
ALABAMA????...wash yo' mouf out wit soap!!! :)[/quote]

Dawg´´s ancestors moved from Scotland to Alabama and Dawg moved from Alabama to California and then Mexico so we continue to head in the right direction. Watch out Bogota.

"Will Twinkies be reborn through new Mexican ownership?":

" ................Grupo Bimbo is the world’s largest bread baking firm, which already owns parts of Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Thomas English Muffins and previously made what was considered a low-ball offer of $580 million a few years ago, Forbes reports. Now Hostess may only be worth $135 million.............

http://nbclatino.com/2012/11/17/will-twinkies-be-reborn-through-new-mexican-ownership/

CheenaGringo wrote:"Will Twinkies be reborn through new Mexican ownership?":

" ................Grupo Bimbo is the world’s largest bread baking firm, which already owns parts of Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Thomas English Muffins and previously made what was considered a low-ball offer of $580 million a few years ago, Forbes reports. Now Hostess may only be worth $135 million.............

http://nbclatino.com/2012/11/17/will-twinkies-be-reborn-through-new-mexican-ownership/

Well that seems appropriate.

Twinkies are for Bimbos. New advert campaign.

The names alone are worth $135MM, then you have the plants and distribution chain.

Someone will buy it, toss the unions and get it back to work.

Hostess problems started when it bought a bunch of stuff and got a lot of different unions. Someone will start over clean and make a fortune without the union problems.

Hostess payroll was 24% higher than its competitors and in the bakery business, that is a killer.

Oh noooo where's the smacking yourself on the head emoticon. Grampa was an advertising exec.

BIMBOS LOVE DING DONGS and TWINKIES. Watch the all the males rush to buy something sweet for their very own bimbos. Darlin' here's a ding dong just for you.

jrm30655 wrote:
Hostess problems started when it bought a bunch of stuff and got a lot of different unions. Someone will start over clean and make a fortune without the union problems.

Hostess payroll was 24% higher than its competitors and in the bakery business, that is a killer.

There are only 2 unions involved and the execs received large salary increases recently. And you are, as usual, uninformed.

neil (cheena), im not going out w/you, so give it up. john wont date peter either, neither of us like internet stalking. either we get back on topic, or we move to octagon. understand????

bennie#2 wrote:neil (cheena), im not going out w/you, so give it up. john wont date peter either, neither of us like internet stalking. understand????

Chris:

This is a very simple issue: bennie#2, aka rosie&sam, aka susan aka bronco aka manny and most any other derogitory name one can think of has been hunkered down at the Lake so long that she holds no attraction for any sane male on this planet! She managed to pull her BS with Jim W but it isn't working with me. I am certainly not attracted to bigots nor clueless people!

Neil:
Remember when she was posting as susan and stated that narcos made for very good boyfriends because they weren't cheap.

seisdedos wrote:

jrm30655 wrote:
Hostess problems started when it bought a bunch of stuff and got a lot of different unions. Someone will start over clean and make a fortune without the union problems.

Hostess payroll was 24% higher than its competitors and in the bakery business, that is a killer.

There are only 2 unions involved and the execs received large salary increases recently. And you are, as usual, uninformed.

What does managements salary have to do with it? The CEO was making $2.5M up from $750K. Hardly extravagant in todays world. At least 2 large venture capital loans were in place and I'm sure that they had to OK the raise.

Hostess has been in trouble for years and filed chapter 11 in 2004. The teamsters looked at the books and took a cut. The bakers union wouldn't take a cut, struck and now 18,000 are out of a job. The teamsters had begged them to work out a deal.

I heard one of the union guys say that he could do better on unemployment. That may be but unemployment doesn't come with a pension plan or healthcare. Not only that but it will run out in 6 months. Hope that guy has a job by then. Since the average time to get a job now is 32 weeks, I doubt it. My guess is that in 6 months, an 8% pay cut is going to look a lot better than no paycheck at all.

Overall, Hostess labor costs were 24% higher than the industry (Bloomberg). The fact that they had about $700MM in debt didn't help either.

You can bet that whoever buys it will make it non union if possible so those bakers union guys are totally screwed.



Now, someone will buy it, crank it back up without the debt and the union and life will go on.

Correct the Teamsters have settled but one other union has not so The Corporate
Twinkie folks did the controlled bankruptcy thing. The judge will now decide to
break it up and sell it off or bring it back intact. It could live or die as a unit.

Z




[/quote]

[quote="seisdedos"]

jrm30655 wrote:
Hostess problems started when it bought a bunch of stuff and got a lot of different unions. Someone will start over clean and make a fortune without the union problems.
Hostess payroll was 24% higher than its competitors and in the bakery business, that is a killer.

Seisdedos, mi amigo, Dawg wonders if you had desired a union when you were denuding the forests of Chiapas many years ago. But, then, you were, at that time simply trying to win the heart of your soon to be betrothed, perhaps had no sympathy for the deforested land and had simple needs confined primarily to a place to lie down after a hard day´s efforts at turning Chiapas from a wooded paradise into a deforested hell hole unsuitable for human habitation. There were no commercial bakeries in the outback then I suppose and certainly no unions. Just slaves to exploit and forests to destroy. What a legasy about which to brag.

OOOOp's Dawg I'm beginning to see flashbacks of a conversation on another forum.

E-raq wrote:OOOOp's Dawg I'm beginning to see flashbacks of a conversation on another forum.

Well, now, E-raq, Dawg cannot check that historical even as I have been banned with bias from both Mexico Conect and Chapala.Com which were most likely the forums upon which I may have posted any such comment leaving only this forum and a few other marginal electronic fora upon which one may read and appreciate my ongoing repartee.

What´s amusing is that I was banned at Mexico Connect one night when the WebJefe obviously had a bit too imuch tequila in the belly and became offended when I confronted a phony moderator he employed at that time making light of her having taken credit for having had something to do with the ancient development of the cuisine of Michoacan awarded status by the morons at UNICEF who also think that mariachi music and Inuit seal sausages are deserving of accolades as marking the cultural progress of mankind. Anyone with even one tastebud knows that Michoacan cuisine, which is among the least accomplished regional culinary arts on the planet just after Uzbekistan Lamb Gonads, is as worthy of culinary note as are Cracker Jacks. At least, with Cracker Jacks you get a surprise.

Since that episode that got Dawg banned at Mexico Connect, the offending modarator has been fired and moved to Mexico City where she could appear to be urbane without actually having ever accomplished anything except having become the world's most successful moocher.

I often wondered why "she" hadn't consulted you about becoming a self styled expert on Chiapas cuisine.

Now I know.

hound dog wrote:
Seisdedos, mi amigo, Dawg wonders if you had desired a union when you were denuding the forests of Chiapas many years ago. But, then, you were, at that time simply trying to win the heart of your soon to be betrothed, perhaps had no sympathy for the deforested land and had simple needs confined primarily to a place to lie down after a hard day´s efforts at turning Chiapas from a wooded paradise into a deforested hell hole unsuitable for human habitation. There were no commercial bakeries in the outback then I suppose and certainly no unions. Just slaves to exploit and forests to destroy. What a legasy about which to brag.

Pay attention, jackass. I didn't marry the bosses daughter. She was sweet on me, not the other way around. Keeping her happy meant keeping my job and far from an unpleasant task. And the way to keep her happy was any straight, young man's dream, I'm sure you understand.


We harvested valued timber that otherwise would have been left to rot or turned into firewood. What was a shame was we were only able to harvest the most valuable trees that would yield export quality lumber. There were who knows how many hundreds of thousands of board feet of still very useful trees that remained because of the strict time limitations we had to remove the primo logs from the path of the road builders.

[quote="E-raq"]

ferret wrote:I'm waiting for the Dawg to post on this but, hey, just think! Maybe those ingredients are what has "fueled" the Dawg all these years. :)

That's truly frightening ferret, like some twisted Stephen King novel. Here's DAWG!!!!! [/quote]

No. no. noi, E-raq. That would be a thinned-down Dawg (AKA Freddy Kruger) exclaiming , "I´M BACK"

Boy, did I have a rough night last night when I relented and went across town from Six Corners to Domino´s Pizza to buy two pizzas for our Chiapas guests exhibiting at the Feria Maestros del Arte without realizing that the carretera from Jocotepec to the Ajijic Libramiento would be jammed on Sunday night with drunks heading back to the city from San Juan Cosala after spending the afternoon eating lousy seafood and drinking tequila by the bottle and, needless to say, I had to slam on the brakes a few times to avoid head on collisions with the borrachos and, during one of those episodes, the super delux pizza slid out of its box and landed on the filthy floor of the car in front of the passenger.side seat. Well, "what was a poor boy to do" but stuff the tainted pizza back into its box and serve it to our Chiapas friends who will now head back to the Chiapas Highlands and tell everyone from Amantenango to Chamula that they make the cruddiest pizza on earth in Ajijic. They shouldn´t be eating pizza anyway, much less Domino´s Pizza

Jajajaja......nice one Mr. Dawg. Glad to see the "5 second rule" in full effect.

[Deleted by poster)

[quote="seisdedos"][quote="hound dog"]
Seisdedos, mi amigo, Dawg wonders if you had desired a union when you were denuding the forests of Chiapas many years ago. But, then, you were, at that time simply trying to win the heart of your soon to be betrothed, perhaps had no sympathy for the deforested land and had simple needs confined primarily to a place to lie down after a hard day´s efforts at turning Chiapas from a wooded paradise into a deforested hell hole unsuitable for human habitation. There were no commercial bakeries in the outback then I suppose and certainly no unions. Just slaves to exploit and forests to destroy. What a legasy about which to brag. uote]


Pay attention, jackass. I didn't marry the bosses daughter. She was sweet on me, not the other way around. Keeping her happy meant keeping my job and far from an unpleasant task. And the way to keep her happy was any straight, young man's dream, I'm sure you understand.

Indeed I do, amigo. Dawg has been concentrating on keeping a certain woman happy for 41 years and, had I not had some moderate success, I would not only not have a computer today with which to harass you but would be awakening in some South Alabama gutter wondering if I had overslept and missed the free breakfast down the street at the Salvation Army. No Ding Dongs there except the Twinkies serving the ersatz eggs and bacon.

Brigitte is definitely a saint. Probably ditto for Señora Seis.

Hostess Mediation Fails, Liquidation To Proceed; Furious Laid Off Workers Now Turn On Labor Union
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/20/2012 19:22 -0500


CreditorsDetroitFresh StartOhioRealityrecovery


Last week, when discussing the next steps for the company, and specifically the hope that mediation may resolve the epic animosity between management and workers, we stated that "What makes a mediation improbable is that the antagonism between the feuding sides has certainly hit a level of no return: "Several unions also objected to the company's plans, saying they made "a mockery" of laws protecting collective bargaining agreements in bankruptcy. The Teamsters, which represents 7,900 Hostess workers, said the company's plan would improperly cut the ability of remaining workers to use sick days and vacation." Sure enough, moments ago we learned that mediation has now failed and the liquidation may proceed. And since in America nobody understands that proper sequence of events involved in a bankruptcy liquidation, where the valuable parts always end up being acquired by someone, in this case the Twinkie brand and recipe, let the pointless Ebay bidding wars over twinkies continue. As for what really happens next, if indeed Bimbo is prohibited from acquiring the assets in the Stalking Horse auction due to anti-trust limitations, then the buyer will almost certainly be a "financial", i.e., another PE firm, whose coming means the end of any hopes and dreams of preserving union status at fresh start Hostess, or whatever the new firm will be named.

From the WSJ:

Hostess Brands Inc. said Tuesday night it would proceed with liquidation plans after mediation fails.

Earlier Tuesday, the head of the bakers union whose strike precipitated Hostess liquidation plans didn't attend a last-ditch mediation session and wasn't hopeful about its prospects, he said.

"I'm not too optimistic about this mediation," Frank Hurt, president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, said when reached earlier Tuesday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. He said he couldn't get to New York, where the session was taking place; instead, he said, the union's secretary-treasurer was attending.



The mediation came at a judge's suggestion after the Twinkie maker said Friday that a week-long strike by the bakers left the company no choice but to seek a bankruptcy judge's approval for liquidation.



The judge, Robert Drain, urged mediation, citing among other things the hope for saving some 18,500 jobs. The company filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in January.



The judge indicated Monday that if mediation wasn't successful, Hostess could return to court Wednesday to pursue its liquidation plan.



Doug Mansky, a Hostess driver in Detroit and a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was in the process of moving to a cheaper condominium on Tuesday, after his union had agreed to an 8% pay cut that he said would shave $200 a week from his income. After Judge Drain cleared Hostess to impose the same new labor terms on the bakers union, they went on strike.



"I hope things work out. I'm going to be 49 and trying to find a job in a market that's terrible," Mr. Mansky said.

Sadly, the reality of learning just how bad the labor market truly is, all smoke and mirrors of a recovery aside, will now have to be experienced by not only Mr. Manksy but 18,499 of his fellow co-workers, who may have been duped into hoping by their union that by holding out a hardline stance, they would gain something.

They have now lost everything. And not too unexpectedly, the workers are now turning on the Union!

[S]ome Hostess workers in another union awaiting the
mediation results criticized Mr. Hurt, the 20-year president of the
bakers union, who defended his decisions and actions during the
company's bankruptcy process.



Scott Quenneville, a Hostess truck driver represented by the Teamsters, said he feels his colleagues were misled by Mr. Hurt into believing that a buyer would swoop in for the company. Mr. Hurt on Sunday said he thought there was a good chance a buyer would emerge who would give union members their jobs back.



"Frank misled a lot of people. He was not going to settle for anything less than closing the company down, because they didn't want that 8% pay cut," said Mr. Quenneville. "If you don't want the job, leave the job. Why ruin 18,000 jobs?"



"I didn't mislead anybody on anything," Mr. Hurt said. He said he didn't tell workers preparing to strike that a buyer for Hostess was definitely waiting in the wings.



Mr. Hurt said, "I don't want anybody to think that anybody is guaranteeing anyone anything, but we did know that there were people taking a look at this company."

This would be a truly fantastic drama, if people's lives were not at stake. And no, not one former Hostess worker will retain their job at the new company: that much is certain.

As we said, if only people had a basic understanding of how bankruptcy truly worked, and what the real state of the economy was, then Hostess' workers may have had a chance and some amicable comrpomise would have been possible.

Then again, if people in America actually understood economics and simple finance, then the "Ohio outcome", and many others, would have likely been quite different.

Now we can only hope we were not correct about the ultimate outcome too: namely that the US government will effectively hijack the bankruptcy process, and in doing so "bailout" a junk food maker, just so 18k votes can be preserved at the expense of creditors and making yet another mockery of the bankruptcy process, and property rights in the US.

Hostess: Union Rules were Harder to Digest than Twinkies
Courtesy of Dr. Paul Price

Did union workers simply get their 'Just Desserts' for backing Hostess into a corner with too many unreasonable demands? Consider the evidence.

Union workers have now completed their mission. 18,500 jobs are gone forever.

The national labor bosses stood firm. Labor leaders are proud they stood up to those nasty ‘suits’ [see Entourage for definition] who refused to run a money-losing business simply to continue paying salaries and benefits.

Hostess posted a $341 million loss in 2011 on revenues of about $2.5 billion. Contributing to those 2011 losses:

•$52 million in Workers’ Comp Claims
•Dealing with 372 Distinct Collective-Bargaining Contracts
•Administration of 80 Separate Health and Benefits Plans
•Funding and Tending to 40 Discrete Pension Plans
•$31 million in year-over-year increases in wages and health care benefits for 2012 v. 2011
Uncounted in the above numbers were the outrageous union-imposed rules that made for a too-high-to-bear cost of sales:

•No truck could carry both bread and snacks even when going to the same location
•Drivers were not permitted to load their own trucks
•Workers who loaded bread were not allowed to also load snacks
•Bringing products from back rooms to shelves required another set of union employees
•Multi-Employer pension obligations made Hostess liable for other, previously bankrupted, retirement plan contributions from employees that never worked for Hostess at all
America has come to this. The only defense against insane union demands is the willingness to walk away and close shop.

With General Motors and Chrysler we found that even that remedy wouldn’t work.

jrm30655 wrote:Hostess: Union Rules were Harder to Digest than Twinkies
Courtesy of Dr. Paul Price

Did union workers simply get their 'Just Desserts' for backing Hostess into a corner with too many unreasonable demands? Consider the evidence.

Union workers have now completed their mission. 18,500 jobs are gone forever.

The national labor bosses stood firm. Labor leaders are proud they stood up to those nasty ‘suits’ [see Entourage for definition] who refused to run a money-losing business simply to continue paying salaries and benefits.

Hostess posted a $341 million loss in 2011 on revenues of about $2.5 billion. Contributing to those 2011 losses:

•$52 million in Workers’ Comp Claims
•Dealing with 372 Distinct Collective-Bargaining Contracts
•Administration of 80 Separate Health and Benefits Plans
•Funding and Tending to 40 Discrete Pension Plans
•$31 million in year-over-year increases in wages and health care benefits for 2012 v. 2011
Uncounted in the above numbers were the outrageous union-imposed rules that made for a too-high-to-bear cost of sales:

•No truck could carry both bread and snacks even when going to the same location
•Drivers were not permitted to load their own trucks
•Workers who loaded bread were not allowed to also load snacks
•Bringing products from back rooms to shelves required another set of union employees
•Multi-Employer pension obligations made Hostess liable for other, previously bankrupted, retirement plan contributions from employees that never worked for Hostess at all
America has come to this. The only defense against insane union demands is the willingness to walk away and close shop.

With General Motors and Chrysler we found that even that remedy wouldn’t work.

Ow I don't know Chrysler and General Motors are doing OK considering. They both
have some of the best product they have ever had. GM was too big to fail and Chrysler
probably should have failed from a Capatilistic view. I guess Hostess is just not big enough
to be saved laugh out loud. Maybe all mega companies should be reduced in size so they
can go bankrupt like Hostess if they screw up and that includes the union folks and bosses.

Z


By the way some of the info is wrong as the Teamsters did settle and were urging other
unions to compromise so it was not quite the bad union thing this person wrote. I don't
know what other bad info was included but when I see one bad data I look for another.