Union problem... handled!

Tastykakes and Twinkies - sounds like a match made in heaven!

Finally I can get my Home Pride bread back. I stopped eating Twinkies in my 30´s or 40´s or maybe it was my 50´s, but I´m looking so forward to eating them again. I don´t care how much gunk they put in my arteries. Let´s hope more companies handle their union problem equally as well.

I was hoping the Mexicans would get their hands on it. Would seem fitting somehow - union thugs drive Hostess into the hands of the Mexicans.

Hello Unions.. I´m sure that you are really happy with you being unemployed, after striking and wanting more!!!!

I want my Beefsteak dark rye back.

I am so glad that Hostess found a buyer and that the employees who made their demands found the door.

If you have a job be darned glad you have it.

The union sure showed them, didn´t they!

There was a Hostess Store I would stop at every other week or so. Sure enjoyed the Suzie Q´s and the Ho Ho´s. I am hoping it will be able to reopen under new management. It did good business.

Deep Fried Twinkies.....AAAHHHHHH!

Ha ha, unions--laughing all the way to the bank.

This is great news,even more so that Tastykake bought them.I remember when Tastykake products were a nickle.

I´ve seen knock off twinkies at the convenience store. I think they´re made by Drakes.

$390M seems like a reasonable price also.

#3, I am with you. I hope they make Home Pride again!!! That was the best bread on mass market.

The fact that all those Hostess unions got shafted in their quest for more greed is the best part. I hope they enjoy their limited unemployment checks and give thanks to their previous union bosses for being so smart.

How can we do this with the teachers and government employees unions? The system is broker than bankrupt Hostess.

In my young years (long ago), our bread was baked by my mother or my dad. The only time store-purchased bread was served was in an emergency. There were snide references to "light bread" if it was on the table. But, Wonder Bread came sliced and even my mother was seduced by the convenience of WB for school sandwiches. My own children, however, refused to eat it, saying it tasted like soap.

I´m glad Wonder Bread was saved.

OK, fine and dandy, the union´s ruined. Where do workers go from here? Do they go back to the same jobs for less pay and benefits? I can´t believe one could make a living for your standard family of four on bakery wages anyway. They´ll probably now qualify for income support even though they are working. Wages go down, welfare goes up, the stockholders get rich and the public gets food we shouldn´t be eating a lot of anyway drops a bit in price (maybe). What exactly was accomplished here? Seriously.

Try having no work. Seriously.

Union BOSSES got richer. The workers got the shaft.

I can hear Ayn Rand chuckling in he great beyond.

If you can´t beat ´em, buy ´em!

I haven´t eaten Tastykakes since I was a kid, but look forward to buying them when available, JUST to support this bakery.

Do ya get the feeling that big business is showing Washington the "naughty" finger? Seems to me this loss for the "union shops" is telling DC something.....

Those of US who survived many hardships and came out the other side winners -- are taking control of our lives again....

The demorats and republicans in DC don´t give a "darn" (not my first choice) and WE´re taking back our power -- FREEDOM..

Part of pelousy and reid and bamboozler´s game -- IS -- they must "convince" US they are in control. Well -- baby -- WE know better... Watch out!! WE´re on the move again -- American style....

LZK

Management: $390 million in the bank;

Unions: unemployed.

Golly. Them union guys sure showed management who´s boss!

Tastykakes are the BEST. We Philly people always felt sorry for the rest of the world being "stuck" with Twinkies, and thinking they were good. Please just don´t contaminate my Tastykakes with any of that twinkie junk.

Unemployed workers receive more in benefits than the working poor. Aren´t we looking for solutions here, or is just revenge and shadenfreude good enough?

My Grandfather´s 3 bakeries made Wonder and Hostess in the South... They were always in the house. Will welcome them back.

18,500( and how many of their family members?) customers will probably never eat them again...or spend their ´Obama Bucks´ on those products. Wonder if the Union Bosses have any regrets now? You have to ask who´s kissing whom in the Union Halls?

Tastykakes are awesome - especially the Butterscotch Krimpets and peanut butter Tandy Takes. Hopefully this means they become more widely available.

R2, shadenfreude will have to do for now. Raw, unbridled free markets can correct the problem by determining the fair price for labor. The bakery worker who cannot support his family can either increase the value of his labor as a baker or aspire and work to do something else.

#16 - Hostess was losing money at a fast clip. There was no argument for keeping it going. There are many losers here - the workers who blindly followed their union over the cliff, the stockholders, creditors, and taxpayers. The creditors and stockholders will likely lose their entire investment or will recoup pennies on the dollar. Taxpayers will end up supporting the workers for a while or forever depending on whether they go back to work, take disability or retire on social security.

same results could have happened with auto companies but no one seems to want to recognise this

The Plant Manager from the Rocky Mount, NC plant is available and ready to work at a moment´s notice! Hehehe and he just might remember who crossed the line *to work* and who sat on their bums in front picketing a company in bankruptcy.

The bakery paid an average of $14.65/hour with excellent health benefits. This does not include shipping or the sales routes (delivery trucks), or semi drivers. Does it support a family of four? No, but these are unskilled jobs.

Can´t wait for the State Fair to have DEEP FRIED TWINKIES again!

Sorry for multiple post. Flowers does have one union plant, the union was there when they bought the plant. Flowers handed them a contract, said "sign here or we close the plant for one year." Union signed. BAM!

Happy ending. Problem solved. I sure hope that the rest of America is watching. This is how you solve a problem like the government. Just go around them. Git´er done!

Wonder Bread - kills strong unions twelve ways.

Well, now that they don´t have to pay 8 different delivery drivers to take a box of Twinkies each to a store, maybe they can pay the people that actually make them more.

Unions = evil

end of story

Psst - why do so many unions begin with "International Brotherhood"

Because they ultimately have their roots in Communism.

#24, #27: Bingo. For those who haven´t had Tastykakes, well, there´s just no comparison to other packaged cakes. None. Not any. The quality and freshness are in a class by themselves. Other packaged cakes give a sense of, "Hey, are there really any natural ingredients in... whatever this thing is?" Tatsykakes are what mother would have baked -- if she had been the very best baker in town! I have 3 boxes of Peanut Butter Kandykakes in the house now.

#28: Exactly. Where´d the moronic idea come from [I know - from the Left] that every job must pay enough to support a family?

#29: Correct across the board. Changes had to be made at Hostess for any of it to survive, but the union [and probably gov´t] said "No!" Hostess replied, "Glug, glug, glug...." As Walter Williams has discussed, the normal course of business is the best, most-efficient way to re-allocate resources from less-efficient [declining] business activities into more-efficient ones. Is it painless? Easy? Simple? No -- but pretty much every other approach, all of which are more-artificial, tail-wags-dog approaches, will in the long run cause more problems, more pain, more losses, more dislocation, take longer, and make the problems even worse.

Re unions: didja ever notice that they don´t buy stock in the companies where their members work? Revealing, when you think about it.

After all the negative news, something like this makes you relish every delicious bite. I hope this sets more corporate Dominos in motion, one click at a time.

" Exactly. Where´d the moronic idea come from [I know - from the Left] that every job must pay enough to support a family?"

One of the areas that we must do better at is not seeming so heartless and cruel.

First, history shows us even in America´s past the free market will drive down wages below what it would take to live even in the lower middle class.

Second, even both husband and wife are $15.00 per hour workers in their family of four it means they will be living in poverty--not even the lower middle class.

We continue to say that not everyone is college material, and they aren´t, so what are we to do? Condemn all the rest to jobs which pay poverty-level wages?

Somebody´s got to bake the snacks. Will they taste better if baked by workers receiving third-world level wages with few if any benefits?

I mean if both husband and wife´s wages TOTAl $15.00 they will be living in poverty.

#40, "One of the areas that we must do better at is not seeming so heartless and cruel." No, we must do better at not allowing people to make us feel "heartless and cruel" for not drinking the kool-aid of socialism. We all have choices. Perhaps people making $15/hr shouldn´t have a family of four. Not having a college degree does not condemn you to a life of low wages. You have to make careful choices, work hard and think outside the box. Both my husband I did it, and have raised our 3 sons to do the same.

Strike - an attempt to increase egg production by strangling the chicken

I grew up in a one-company town (the company produced steel). The company had a union.

The steel mill became obsolete, and was shutdown piece-meal, and eventually completely shutdown (the last two blast furnaces were 80 years old and 100 years old).

The union was powerless to stop the shutdown, and it was not cost effective to upgrade an old mill.

At that point the town had no business to drive the local economy. People that had any money moved away. The town ended up with the third highest crime rate in the county. Not good.

The town never attracted any new business. If anyone ever contacted the town about opening a new business, the union would be there. The town officials were tied to the union. No new business ever moved in.

My brother and I moved away. We eventually moved our parents. It was unsafe. The town has had a curfew for the last 30-40 years. The purpose of the curfew was to keep law-abiding citizens off the street for their own safety. I always laugh when I see an article questioning the legality of curfews.

Unions had alot to do with the state of the town. Unions have a place, but can be extremely destructive. Unions take on a life of their own, and stop looking out for anyone but the union itself.

StormCenter: my mother remembers visiting a neighbor and having her first light bread, mayo and tomato sandwish. She was 9yrs old. Now, 81 years later she can still ´taste´ it and relish the memory.

I remember when TasteeKakes were only available in PA and NJ. Loved their butterscotch.

Nice finger in the eye of another union - have you guys figured out Cause and Effect yet???

Lazy reporting.

FTA: "Flower Foods, based in Thomasville, Ga., is best known for Tastykakes . . , " yet they´ve only had the Tastykake brand since last summer, when they acquired the Tasty Baking Company of Philadelphia.

While growing up, it was Wonder Bread (often referred to as cotton bread) on my family’s table. Time Marches On! Today, it’s nothing less than delectable, absolutely uncotton, 12-grain bread for me. Does that make me a “Progressive?” Good grief, I hope not!

Over many years, it’s been my up-close-and-personal observation and experience that once-worthwhile unions have evolved and ultimately become an impediment to businesses and their employees, not an asset. For their members, unions seem to bollix up almost everything they can get their heavy hands on. However, for their bosses, it’s quite the opposite.

I hope they do not change the recipes.

I just hope and pray that bo´s favorite golf courses go out of business because they can´t deal with the seiu demands, and/or they can´t afford bo care payments.
Out

Unions need to realize that they are part of the free market. If they price themselves too high, the employer will seek alternatives, which can include moving, sending jobs overseas or going out of business. The wage spriral they expect--wage increases with no increase in production-- is what makes their wages "unliveable" because it is inflationary.

Beefsteak rye was the best. Tastykakes are now in most super markets up here on the No. Shore of MA.

Somehow the idea that ALL JOBS will earn a "living wage" - is a leftist fantasy that is fundamentally at odds with reality, like all leftist ideas.

A job will pay what it is worth economically, with a premium for rare and highly productive skills. If the worker cannot live on that pay, then the worker gets another job, or gets some higher valued skills and a job that will create more economic value so it will pay more.

The unions fail to connect value created by the work product with worker wages, and this disconnect destroys companies if unions persist.

Unions I had to deal with in our business were run by thugs. Oh the stories I could tell. Their main goal was their own power. We started an industry in our area, trained our workers - totaling at lest in the hundreds - signed up with the unions since they controlled (supposedly) our customers ability to hire us. Long story short - unions didn´t hold up their end of the deal and we ended up competing against non-union labor that often cost 1/3 of what we had to pay. And it got really old on Fridays listening to our employees - reading the union book to us explaining why we had to pay them for accomplishing little to less.

After 30+ years we lost everything. Fortunately the work ethic and ingenuity that we had in the first place has now given us a comfortable life once again. And guess what - we did it with no permanent employees and no unions. Lesson learned.

And BTW, RR#16 - if taxes and spending weren´t so out of control maybe we could afford to support our families on less - like most of the USA did in the 1950s before our completely unsuccessful War on Poverty, etc. etc.

I have never supported Union policies or politics But just one reminder All the Unions involved except 1 voted to go back to work in a compromise.
That 1 union alone caused thousands of people to loose their jobs.
The out of work union members not involved with the bakers union should work to eliminate that obstruction from their work world.

Food, Shelter is a given requirement. Then the mandatory health insurance. That should really help at the end of the month. /s

Gonna be a lot of hurting folks when the "Affordable Care Act" really kicks in.

#55, yes, all but one of the unions voted for the contract, but, through the years, all of them contributed to the mess the company was in in the end, with a little help from lousy management.

In Los Angeles, one of the most beautiful sites is the Bel Air Hotel. They closed down for three years, the P R was to re model, re decorate. The truth was to go into bankruptcy during those three years and rid themselves of the cancerous union growth....which tey did. Now they´re back open and cancer free. The same thing is happening in New York, older, finer places, overtaken by union cancer, going BK for recovery.

Pardon the second post. Another story.

There was another company where the union called a strike. They were out for over a year. The company gave the union a final ultimatim. Take the current offer or we shutdown permanently. The union refused the offer, and the company shutdown permanently.

A few days after that, there happened to be rank and file workers calling a radio talk show. Seemed the rank and file was ready to return to work, but somehow the union ´leadership´ overruled the rank and file. The workers calling the talk show were truly shocked at what happened. They felt the union had betrayed them.

Btw, the Democrats are not pro-labor. They are pro-UNION-labor.

#40,
"Second, even both husband and wife are $15.00 per hour workers in their family of four it means they will be living in poverty--not even the lower middle class." According to my calculator, both working 50 weeks a year comes to $60k plus they had nice benefits. That´s poverty? I´d say that´s not managing your budget.

"We continue to say that not everyone is college material, and they aren´t, so what are we to do? Condemn all the rest to jobs which pay poverty-level wages?"
Plumbers, Electricians, Truck Drivers, heavy-equipment operators, welders, etc, etc don´t require college and pay well once you have experience - if the unions aren´t bulloxing things up where you work.
We (the government) shouldn´t do anything - the government needs to get out of the way completely. In case you haven´t heard, central control doesn´t work - for every ´problem´ government solves it creates two or more of equal or greater magnitude. You sound just like a L/P troll pushing the bogus demand for equal outcome - which under socialism means equal misery, no matter how hard or smart you work. Which isn´t American or America. The document reads ´pursuit of happiness´ not guaranteed happiness, which the government can never give anyway.

Another union story. My father in law worked for a local meat packing co. Union reps came to the owner (a good guy), and wanted outlandish wages, etc. Owner said no. Union said we´ll make big trouble. Owner said--ok will give you all you want. Only one problem. Company will no longer deduct union dues from checks. You´ll have to collect dues on your own. Union reps realized members would then see exactly what they were paying, and BACKED DOWN ON ALL DEMANDS.

Read the article, posters - not the headline. Flower only purchased the bread brands. The dessert cakes still are looking for a new owner.

Next time you have a Whataburger, the buns came from Flowers.

I hope Tastykakes baker also buys Twinkies item from Hostess. TastyTwinkies! A fine corporate pairing. Used to love me some Tastykakes when waist line permitted. And I know the union-free Twinkies would just taste better. Note to self to break down and buy a pair of those new and improved cream-filled Twinkie sponge treats when available.

Here we go again. If one doesn´t tow the hardest of the hard-line conservative positions, one must be a "troll".

So, there´s no room for debate regarding wages? It´s always either/or? Either you go college (and can pay for it), or somehow learn a skilled trade without going to school, and be rich, or you must live in poverty, because wages always perfectly match the value of your work.

The employers will always be fair, the unions were/are always corrupt, those in low paying jobs lack a work ethic and are getting just what they deserve. Humm. I see.

I say that as Republicans we can agree to disagree, that there should be no purity test regarding conservatism, that some litmas test requiring hatred of unionism should never exist, and that this nation can do better than condemn a huge swath of the population to third-world poverty wages for those jobs not requiring a college degree or a skilled trade.

In a town near me about 300,000pop,the masterminds at the city council, listened to the Unions and the activists. They wanted a "living wage" for hotel workers.
It wouldbe something like $11.00 per hr with health benefits and 13.00 w/o. so the first hotel confronted this issue. The mgmnt fired the entire staff. The management said that the hotel clerks etc and bosses could vacuum and the number of rooms in the hotel would be closed down.
Then the council showed up and all the lefty congressers and state reps crying the blues.
But this town wants to be a bigshot convention town, expanded airport and brand name 12 story hotels down town.So they are going to close the top few floors to get under the 99 rooms that applies.
Stupid is as stupid does...

Free markets rule!

When bread here went to $4.00 a loaf, I said that´s it. I studied baking on the internet, got my wife to cough up a few old family recipes and we have had fresh baked bread here at home ever since- now I bake pies and cakes and even cookies- we handed out more than 30 dzn cookies this Xmas and guess what, the neighbors responded with more love- we got batches of all kinds, from home made hot chocolate mix to little cakes and even nut bars- one little girl came over with ribbon wrapped rice Krispy treats she made herself- we´re the hit of the neighborhood now- Hostess and unions can go to H! We have found a rather new (old) way of life here.

Why should the Republicans care about unions? They are never going to get their votes. Unions have outlived their usefulness. Heck, Obamacare requires employers to provide health insurance, doesn´t it? I was a member of a union once. There was an employee that was getting fired. There was no concrete reason. It was probably just a personality thing. He was a dues-paying union member. And you know what the union did? Nothing. So how was he better off than a non-union employee? All that money for nothing. And you know what else? Smart companies pay their employees a fair wage and give benefits so they won´t unionize. I worked for a company like that once, too. As far as I know, their factory is still non-union.