News Nov 28, 2012 at 8:15 am

Comments

1
God we have such pathetic boss-worship in this country. Even if I were dumb enough to believe in trickle-down economics, I still wouldn't blame the hostess thing on the unions for "not letting the company run efficiently." Cutting your employees' pay is NOT "efficiency" if you're simultaneously tripling your own pay. It's theft.

What these people are essentially saying is that the hostess workers should simply sit there and let their bosses steal from them. If they don't, they're being "ungrateful" for the jobs they've been "provided" (nevermind that a job is only good if you get PAID for it, and that the workers are earning that money by, you know, WORKING, so it's not like a job is a fucking charity donation).

This is such medieval peasant/lord bullshit that I can't believe anyone is spineless enough to condone it. I refuse to revere someone, no matter how transparently irresponsible, dishonest, and shitty their behavior is, simply because of their status as a rich CEO.

They're like lapdogs berating a disobedient fellow lapdog: "What are you doing? Don't upset your master! If you upset your master then it's YOUR fault when he does something bad!" Pathetic.
2
Conservatives are like dogs alright, as @1 alluded. But they're more like Pavlov's dogs than lapdogs.

Conservatives have conditioned themselves and their followers to give the knee-jerk reaction "High taxes and unions are to blame!" to every problem, question, issue, and policy they see. They don't stop and think, they don't ask any relevant questions, they just blame unions and taxes. Period. The bell rings and they automatically drool. Simple as that.
3
@1,

I know I've mentioned this before, but it's funny to me that the first people lined up to blame the unions are also usual the ones claiming that workers are operating in a free market, and, if they don't like their compensation at their current place of employment, they're free to seek out employment elsewhere. And then a unionized company fails, and suddenly workers are actually supposed to be indentured servants.
4
I haven't had a Twinkie in maybe 40 years? I remember liking them way better as a tiny youngster. The sponge cake was reasonably fresh and the filing was a fairly decent though industrial banana creme. When I had one years later, the cake had become crumbly and stale and painted with something sticky, and the filling was a corn syrup-sweetened, whipped shortening that was, presumably, loaded with trans fat. The banana flavor was gone. It was, in a word, disgusting. So saying goodbye to Twinkies isn't difficult for me. It had gone so far downhill that - well, for me at least, it killed itself. The only sorrow I feel is the nostalgia of something else disappearing from childhood.

The management/CEO issue and the default blaming of the union is infuriating and I, for one, am glad that someone is putting the alternative, yet very true story of the collapse of Hostess out there for the public to digest. And to the people who turn up their noses to unions thinking only low class people need one need to remember that before unions in this country 12-year-old kids worked in textile mills, there were no paid sick days or holidays, you worked six days a week for 10-12 hours a day, and paid (or even unpaid) vacations? Please.

The decline of the unions runs parallel to the decline of the middle class. I remember grocery store cashiers and workers in commercial bread bakeries and garment workers being able to live if not a comfortable middle class life, then at least a secure one with bills paid and a little in savings. They could even afford in many cases an annual family vacation trip to Florida or Disneyland or New York or Washington for a week. That's almost unheard of now.

And once again I reiterate, my love for Jon Stuart Leibowitz knows no bounds. I think even Warren Buffet is fond of him. By the way, how can the 1st or 2nd richest guy in the US be such a nice guy? How is that possible? Proves you don't have to be a real dick to be ultra-successful in the business world.
5
Twinkies will be back. They'll be made by a different company but everything else about them will be identical. The brand and the recipe are valuable assets, and liquidation merely means those assets will be sold to a new owner.

As for the workers, I agree with everything @1 said.


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