[ale] Way OT - the death of Twinkies

[Scott Plante]

I found that very surprising, so I did a bit of googling. I think that must have been meant as a bit of hyperbole. They were asked to take an 8% cut, of which they'd get 4% back next year, and to start paying 17% of their healthcare instead of their current 0%. Here are a few more surprising facts I came across: 



--Hostess paid out almost $100 million in health benefits for retirees last year, but over half of it covered workers who never had worked at Hostess. The Teamsters’ onerous and antiquated “multi-employer pension plan” foists the pension obligations of a bankrupt company on to the balance sheets of surviving rivals—ensuring a steady death spiral in any declining industry. A similar “MEPP” almost killed YRC, one of the largest trucking companies. 


--Union rules forced Hostess to run separate truck fleets for delivering bread vs. sweets. A sweets driver, serving a 7-11 store, was forbidden from restocking shelves with breads already delivered and waiting in the back—he had to call for a bread driver to swing by and handle. 


--The union restrictions on the 5,500 distribution routes at Hostess made it unprofitable to serve tiny outlets, yet Hostess was barred from using smaller, sleeker—and non-union—distributors. 


--Workers were asked to take an 8% pay cut and pay 17% of their health-care costs instead of zero. Welcome to the club, guys. For this, they would have received 25% ownership of Hostess plus $100 million of Hostess debt to be paid back to the unions. 


From: http://goo.gl/BR9uX 


Apparently, the best you can do with unemployment is 46.9% of your pay, and it goes as low as 20.6%. 
http://goo.gl/WA5T6 

By the way, the judge has ordered them back into mediation today. Perhaps they'll stay open yet. 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Jim Kinney" <jim.kinney at gmail.com> 
To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org> 
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2012 9:27:43 AM 
Subject: Re: [ale] Way OT - the death of Twinkies 


Ouch! To make more on unemployment than at the new pay rate. OUCH! No wonder they walked out. 


On Nov 17, 2012 9:21 AM, "Lightner, Jeff" < JLightner at water.com > wrote: 


My first thought on hearing about this the other day was of the movie Zombieland in which Woody Harrelson's character's main driving force is the search for the "last twinkies". A funny bit was when his traveling companion blasts through a door with a shotgun only to find the only box of twinkies on the other side of it blasted as well. :-) 

Twinkies won't go away - in the company's statement they made the comment that the brands would likely be sold. 

Interestingly their main union had actually signed a contract and it was a lesser union that went on strike. A co-worker of mine said that he had heard or read that other union did it because they decided they'd make more money on unemployment than with the new contract with all the concessions it had. 



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