Twinkies bakers say they’d rather lose jobs than take pay cuts
Workers had a laundry list of frustrations, from rising healthcare costs to decreased wages and delayed pension benefits. They even cited a $10-per-week per worker charge they said Hostess claimed was needed to boost company capital.
“They have taken and taken and taken from us,” said Debi White, who has worked at Hostess for 26 years, most recently as a bun handler at its bread and roll plant in Lenexa, Kansas.
“They have been walking around stomping their foot saying either you give in … or else we’re going to close you now. Well, go ahead, we’re tired of their threats,” she said. “That’s how we feel.”
Hostess workers are now scrambling to figure out when their health insurance runs out — or if it already has — and where and how to apply for job retraining and unemployment benefits.
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Welcome to the 8%, Hostess workers.
Robert_Paulson on November 22, 2012 at 12:38 PM
They have their priorities strait.
Rode Werk on November 22, 2012 at 12:38 PM
Obama, with the long unemployment/then disability handouts, will make life easy for the enslaved fools.
You and our families, suffer the bondage. You deserve no more/less.
May you all be destroyed, in poverty, dark/cold, hungry and deprived. May all the ills of Obama befall all of you and the idiots like you.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:39 PM
People who strike themselves out of a job shouldn’t be eligible for unemployment or any other benefits any more than ANYONE ELSE who just decides they “don’t want to work” anymore is.
There should be no special rights for ANYONE.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:39 PM
Such half-baked logic.
mintycrys on November 22, 2012 at 12:39 PM
Well, OK then. Happy to oblige.
Brad on November 22, 2012 at 12:39 PM
Over paid, under worked. Let them go.
Dollayo on November 22, 2012 at 12:40 PM
One thing I learned during my years FORCED to be a part of the Michinists Union at Boeing.
A strike was not a pereiod of time away from work, without an income, being cold and walking a picket line.
As Strike was a CLUB that you could hit the company over the head with.
Apparently that attitude hasn’t changed much.
jaydee_007 on November 22, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Wait after seeing months and months of anti-Bain ads I thought when you lost your job it ended your life. You were ruined and there was no coming back…..
hmmm.
CW on November 22, 2012 at 12:41 PM
No one cheers a tyrant more than those he enslaves.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Over paid, under worked, let them go!
Dollayo on November 22, 2012 at 12:41 PM
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:39 PM
Indeed…insteady these moochers keep on mooching more, until they are all enslaved sheep of Obama.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:42 PM
The vast majority of the work force feels the same way. Ask yourself how many employers actually cut wages anywhere? It rarely happens, and when it does, it doesn’t happen at 30%. Hostess wasn’t capable of offering competitive wages, and so its employees rightfully determined that they could find competitive wages elsewhere. Isn’t this exactly how labor is supposed to behave in the free market paradigm?
ernesto on November 22, 2012 at 12:42 PM
Correction
You and
ouryour families, suffer the bondage.Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:43 PM
Of course, all the OTHER employees who formerly worked there might have a different view of their selfish action.
ProfShadow on November 22, 2012 at 12:45 PM
ernesto on November 22, 2012 at 12:42 PM
Free market, indeed, and you ain’t seen nothin’, yet. Enjoy.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:45 PM
This 18+K out of a job sure will make next Thursday’s jobs number bad, if they put the number in it? Not that it matters now, bho(I won)!
L
letget on November 22, 2012 at 12:45 PM
I keep telling people around me that it’s only a matter of time before the Looters completely overload the system, that Obama has brought this ultimate crisis (that hits ALL socialist systems when they run out of other people’s money) by AT LEAST a whole generation.
When China quits loaning money and the Dollar collapses, the ruling class will feed ITSELF, not the Looters.
As I said in this blog post, our future is looking a lot like the Hunger Games and other apocalyptic movies than it is Star Trek at this point.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:46 PM
Union douche got Obama phone
WeekendAtBernankes on November 22, 2012 at 12:46 PM
I’m with Brad, a few comments above. My first thought upon reading the headline was “Good, then. We can stop talking about these brainwashed people who don’t recognize that it is the union that is destroying the company.” I’m sick of them. I have joined the LIB movement. Let. It. Burn. Then we will rebuild it by reinstating our cannibalized Constitution.
zeebeach on November 22, 2012 at 12:46 PM
If you own a company, fire a handfull of millennials. They brought you Obama, twice. Let them suffer on their own unproductive skin. They, the spoiled brats, have never produced anything. They need to learn on their very own.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:47 PM
Anyone know how much the union bakers make per year? If it’s $22,000, I can understand the grief over a pay cut. But if it’s $65,000 a year.. well then, I have much less sympathy.
From what I understand, this was over a 2% contribution to retirement accounts.
Nethicus on November 22, 2012 at 12:47 PM
Who said that?
BigGator5 on November 22, 2012 at 12:47 PM
How is it fair to the taxpayer that these Looters have the CHOICE to keep WORKING and make 5% less, or to STOP WORKING and become a 100% liability on the taxpayer?
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:47 PM
What a fallacious argument.
So you were out their defending Bain right??
You’re a hypocrite.
CW on November 22, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Now that they are unemployed, they are effectively unemployable. I certainly would not put my name to a public statement like that. That person will never get a job if the employers are diligent and smart.
astonerii on November 22, 2012 at 12:49 PM
Ernesto, Obama, and all other communists know less about economics than I do about brain surgery (at least I know it relates to operating on an organ inside the skull). They think they are dealing with a finite pie in a zero sum game, and that they can re-apportion that pie at will to benefit themselves, and that their actions WILL HAVE NO CONSEQUENCES.
IE: they believe that if they soak “the rich” that the “rich” will cheerfully work as hard (or harder) accepting the loss “for the greater good (which is always for the government) and just fork it over. This is NEVER true. Capital always takes flight from higher taxes, which is why California is literally emptying of everything but Illegal Aliens. What these new designated government victims will do is work harder to AVOID paying taxes. And God bless them.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:52 PM
This must be clarified, propagated and understood better.
The looters are not the moochers.
The looters, as in the bad characters of Ayn Rand, are Obama, the top looter, and all his operatives, the real bad guys/gals.
The moochers are all the stupid fools who cheer the tyrants who enslave them. Said tyrants live well and always take care of themselves and their own. Included here are the old media. They, all of them, don’t give a damn about the middle class or the poor. They aim to make the middle class poor, so they can control them better. Obama is well on his way. The malaise is directed by him. Don’t believe his ‘love of middle class’ – it’s all a charltanic hoax.
To your economic/financial point – soon the fake interest rates will jump to at least 3%…just a matter of time for what “soon” means. Once that happens it will be a runaway train the such pain there never has been.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:53 PM
If you have any balls, you’ll go lay your arguments to the unemployed bakers, instead of coming here braying nonsense.
22044 on November 22, 2012 at 12:54 PM
Yep.
If I were responsible for hiring people in a city where there was a Hostess facility I would disqualify anyone who had that on their resume. Anyone willing to go full homicide bomber on their previous company would almost certainly be willing to do the same thing to mine.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 12:54 PM
Not really. Instead of using a union to destroy a plant through poor work ethics requirements, they should have used the power of their employment to find another job and let someone else fill the void if they were willing to work for $27 an hour pushing a button every 15 minutes.
Instead what they did was allow the union to write rules that made their work less valuable, and less valuable and less valuable every contract until they were producing less than their wages could justify. Then they want the tax payer to pick up their unemployment and training costs. Not how labor should behave.
When I am sick, I still go to work, I produce well enough for my employer that even sick I am still considered an over achiever to my leads. If I feel I am too sick to produce enough to cover my wages, I stay home for that period. I produce more than I am paid in order for the company to earn more money so later they can pay me more. That is how labor should behave.
astonerii on November 22, 2012 at 12:55 PM
No idea
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:55 PM
If only it were a free market.
In a REAL Free Market (something of which you apparently know nothing about) the company (Hostess) would be able to Fire all of the Idiots who would rather be without job than take a pay cut, and then Hire People who are willing (and there are tens of thousands of those) to do the work at the rate of pay Hostess can afford to pay for the job.
jaydee_007 on November 22, 2012 at 12:56 PM
Exactly, the proper wage correlates to the value the employee brings to the company.
But that’s foreign to most leftists.
22044 on November 22, 2012 at 12:57 PM
You can’t fix stupid.
I’ve done vehicle graphics for years and one of my customers was IBC (hostess) when it was located near Mid Town, Kansas City, Mo. until 2004.
I saw back then the fuster cluck knots of union rules which had management by the short hairs: hours worked, dock restrictions, truck allotments, driver restrictions, delivery routes, and the ever increasing demands for wages and bennies, etc.
Cause of death: malignant unionism.
locomotivebreath1901 on November 22, 2012 at 12:57 PM
It wouldn’t seem to register with any of these people that perhaps they were overpaid to start with and the market is correcting itself.
Plus, overtime doesn’t last forever. Or at least it shouldn’t if you are working for a well-run company.
Oh well. Enjoy the government dole. They’ll eventually cut you off the teat too.
kim roy on November 22, 2012 at 12:57 PM
So I guess Union contracts are suicide apps.
dczombie on November 22, 2012 at 12:57 PM
Uh, that is, suicide pacts.
dczombie on November 22, 2012 at 12:58 PM
The employees were never forced to work at hostess and could have quit at any time. Yet they chose not to. Then decided to bankrupt the company as a result of their decision.
Your spin is funny.
lorien1973 on November 22, 2012 at 12:58 PM
rogerb on November 22, 2012 at 12:59 PM
The bottom line is that Hostess could no longer sell enough product to support the bloated wages and benefits these employees were getting. Something’s gotta give. But instead of searching for lifeboats when the Hostess Titanic hit the iceberg, these passengers sat around on the deck insisting that the captain find a way to get them to land…without conceding enough to lighten the load. So they’ll drown, content in the belief that they had nothing to do with the disaster, and they won’t care who else or how many others they’ll take down with them.
fitzfong on November 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM
You are correct in the sense that the “Ayn Rand” style Looters are indeed those who are in leadership who are intentionally directing this train over the cliff.
Socialism, without exception, has been demonstrated to be a failure that never works, that CAN never work, and that it always leads to misery. Except amongst the elite, of course. Barry and Mooch will always dine on all the Wagyu beef they want, even if the masses can’t afford a can of beans.
There are only two kinds of socialists: The Malevolent and the Ignorant.
The Malevolent consists of the leadership, the classic “Looters” who pursue socialism KNOWING that it doesn’t work for the masses, but because it will enrich and empower THEMSELVES. These types are truly EVIL.
The Ignorant are the majority, these moochers make up the bulk of the Looter Class who are so ignorant of reality that they believe that the government truly CAN provide everything, and that they are somehow ENTITLED to it, and that such a system is perpetually sustainable.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 1:01 PM
Yes. Let me add a wee bit:
And if Hostess were underpaying in a free market, then no one would take the jobs and they’d be forced to pay what the MARKET (worker) dictated.
Mind you, all those nifty “undocumented” people kind of put wrenches into the machinery because they will work for less than they might have if they were “documented”. Yet another reason for some kind of control over worker “documentation”.
But nah. That wouldn’t fit into the liberal paradigm either.
kim roy on November 22, 2012 at 1:02 PM
Somewhere I read that Hostess couldn’t use the same truck to haul Wonder Bread and Twinkies. This and other such nonsense raises the cost of doing business. The laid-off workers should ask what their union thug bosses are giving up.
Dingbat63 on November 22, 2012 at 1:02 PM
There is an argument that COULD be made that these people had no choice to quit and get a better job elsewhere, but it wouldn’t help ernesto the red:
It is, indeed, NOT POSSIBLE in a lot of places and occupations to find better work (even if you are well qualified and have great skills) because of how awful Obama’s leadership on the economy has been.
I’m in that situation. I’ve not had a raise since Obama took office. My company manufactures products for business, sells products to business, and because of how badly businesses are doing, we aren’t making money.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 1:04 PM
The real irony here is that the greatest enemy of the American worker (besides Obama)is the fact that Illegal Aliens are allowed to artificially depress the labor market.
The fact that labor unions are by and large AGAINST immigration enforcement and have practically the same position the corporatists do should tell anyone who belongs to one that the union is far more into socialism than it is into protecting their best interests.
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 1:08 PM
People who end up losing their jobs because they refused to do their jobs should not qualify for unemployment benefits.
The Rogue Tomato on November 22, 2012 at 1:09 PM
Strike yourself out of a job and run straight to the state.
mredly on November 22, 2012 at 1:10 PM
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 1:01 PM
Excellent!
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 1:11 PM
Exactly. This union CHOSE to shift the burden of these people from what could have still been a private, going concern, 100% to the taxpayers. Not because they had to, but because they CHOOSE to.
Why is it that businesses have to pay into unemployment insurance funds but UNIONS do not?
They should!
wildcat72 on November 22, 2012 at 1:12 PM
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