[Yertology]

Bought the last four Twinkie boxes out of my Walmart tonight

[czsmithGT]

Originally Posted by Yertology

Bought the last four Twinkie boxes out of my Walmart tonight

Someone just bid $76 for three boxes of Twinkies on Ebay LOL

[certifiedfunds]

Originally Posted by czsmithGT

Someone just bid $76 for three boxes of Twinkies on Ebay LOL

I think I won

[ChuteTheMall]

Too big to fail, Obama's gonna buy them with our money and give them to the union for free.

[Blast]

Possible glimmer of light?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...ss-brands.html

[Yertology]

Yeah I've been watching. Do twinkies keep well? Cause I'm thinking these 4 boxes will get me a rtf2 g22 in a year or two

[IndyGunFreak]

Someone will pick up the Twinkie brand. There's already all sorts of generics of them anyway.

I hate that Indpls is going to lose a lot of jobs to this, but I'm glad they told the thugs to pound sand..

[berto62]

They've probably been gutting the company for along time to boost short term stock value (ie not reinvesting in the plant, securing new markets etc etc.)
You never close a profitable, well run business down out of spite for the union. Anybody who believes that is a moron. They've probably been planning this along time and are now using the strike as an excuse. I am no tax expert but business owners can claim additional tax breaks for going **** up, especially if it is due to labor strife, as well as stiffing people they owe money to. You know, just good business, nothing personal.

[berto62]

[willie_pete]

Originally Posted by berto62

They've probably been gutting the company for along time to boost short term stock value (ie not reinvesting in the plant, securing new markets etc etc.)
You never close a profitable, well run business down out of spite for the union. Anybody who believes that is a moron. They've probably been planning this along time and are now using the strike as an excuse. I am no tax expert but business owners can claim additional tax breaks for going **** up, especially if it is due to labor strife, as well as stiffing people they owe money to. You know, just good business, nothing personal.

Actually the private equity firm that owned most of Hostess (Ripplewood) pumped more than M$170 into the company since 2009 to try to keep it afloat; M$130 in 2009 and another M$40 in 2011. What's even more fun is that the main principle of Ripplewood is a DEMOCRAT.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-1...winkie-tumbles

WP

[Restless28]

I saw last light that someone at Pabst may buy the company.

PBR and Twinkies?

Hell Yeah!!!

[airmotive]

Originally Posted by Restless28

I saw last light that someone at Pabst may buy the company.

PBR and Twinkies?

Hell Yeah!!!

That has all the makings of a reality TV show right thar...

[devildog2067]

Originally Posted by berto62

They've probably been gutting the company for along time to boost short term stock value
(ie not reinvesting in the plant, securing new markets etc etc.)

Not even a little bit true. Hostess went into bankruptcy in 2004. This management team wasn't around then. They filed again in 2012. There isn't anything in the company to "gut."

That statement was just retarded. I can't speak to their capex requirements or what they should be spending on PPE since I've never looked at the financials of a bakery business, but I'm guessing that they've been spending all of their cash on operations since, you know, they've been bankrupt.

You never close a profitable, well run business down out of spite for the union. Anybody who believes that is a moron.

It's not a profitable business. That's the point. If it were profitable they wouldn't have gone bankrupt twice in 8 years.

Who's the moron, exactly?

They've probably been planning this along time and are now using the strike as an excuse. I am no tax expert

That's pretty clear.

but business owners can claim additional tax breaks for going **** up, especially if it is due to labor strife, as well as stiffing people they owe money to. You know, just good business, nothing personal.

You know what's good business? Selling products and making money. If Hostess was capable of doing that, that's what they'd be doing. Going bankrupt is the opposite of good business. No one is doing this because they want to steal one pay period worth of baker's wages. They're doing it because there's literally no cash left to run the business if they can't sell Twinkies, and they can't borrow any more.

Even in their down years they've been a multi-billion dollar business. If there was any way for them to be competitive, they'd be doing it. The "business owners" (who are now a collection of funds who have injected capital into a dying business and aren't going to get it back) would love nothing more than for their labor force to be going to work, making Ding Dongs, putting them on the truck and selling them. If that was happening, they'd be making money. As it is, they're going to lose their entire investment.

"Business owners" don't have some sort of magical economic rules that the rest of us don't know about. In almost every case when a business goes under, the business owners lose their ass. They lose their investment and future income.

[devildog2067]

Originally Posted by IndyGunFreak

Someone will pick up the Twinkie brand.

Yep.

Hostess will go into liquidation, someone will buy the valuable brand names without the baggage of the legacy union benefits and debt and old plants, and in a year no one will remember this happened except the people who lost their jobs.

It's the way the system is supposed to work. If I were one of those bakers I'd be chasing my union rep through the streets with a pitchfork right now.

[Restless28]

Originally Posted by devildog2067

Not even a little bit true. Hostess went into bankruptcy in 2004. This management team wasn't around then. They filed again in 2012. There isn't anything in the company to "gut."

That statement was just retarded. I can't speak to their capex requirements or what they should be spending on PPE since I've never looked at the financials of a bakery business, but I'm guessing that they've been spending all of their cash on operations since, you know, they've been bankrupt.



It's not a profitable business. That's the point. If it were profitable they wouldn't have gone bankrupt twice in 8 years.

Who's the moron, exactly?



That's pretty clear.



You know what's good business? Selling products and making money. If Hostess was capable of doing that, that's what they'd be doing. Going bankrupt is the opposite of good business. No one is doing this because they want to steal one pay period worth of baker's wages. They're doing it because there's literally no cash left to run the business if they can't sell Twinkies, and they can't borrow any more.

Even in their down years they've been a multi-billion dollar business. If there was any way for them to be competitive, they'd be doing it. The "business owners" (who are now a collection of funds who have injected capital into a dying business and aren't going to get it back) would love nothing more than for their labor force to be going to work, making Ding Dongs, putting them on the truck and selling them. If that was happening, they'd be making money. As it is, they're going to lose their entire investment.

"Business owners" don't have some sort of magical economic rules that the rest of us don't know about. In almost every case when a business goes under, the business owners lose their ass. They lose their investment and future income.

Bazinga!

[Z71bill]

Why not just increase the selling price of Twinkies by 50% and give the poor working man a raise and better benefits?


Maybe the unions should buy the company - then they would be able to give all the employees the BIG FAT raises they deserve - plus better benefits.


It is so easy to run a highly competitive business - I don't see why they are having all these problems.

Can't they just borrow the money they need to keep paying everyone the higher wages?

Maybe we need legislation - just pass a law that says -no company can go out of business unless the union says it is OK.

That way everyone wins - the company stays in business - the employees get paychecks.

[phil evans]

Originally Posted by berto62

pixie dust from a fairyland creature will resurrect twinkies.

it's BHO, our precious leader.
the treamsters union and their camp followers will continue to parasitize this weakened company.

[Restless28]

The Bloomberg link had a statement from the holding company of Pabst basically saying that they will buy the company and see it prosper out from under the oppression of the union.

This is how you kill unions. Bravo!

[Dragline]

Originally Posted by airmotive

That has all the makings of a reality TV show right thar...

We are on that like flies on...well, you know

[NDCent]

Dang, June Shannon is a looker!

[berto62]

Originally Posted by Restless28

The Bloomberg link had a statement from the holding company of Pabst basically saying that they will buy the company and see it prosper out from under the oppression of the union.

This is how you kill unions. Bravo!

Im not saying unions are great....I think that blame can be spread evenly across the board. What I find confusing is people trying to vilify unions when CEO's and CFO's and Cwhateverthe****o's are running these company's into the ground, walking away with millions and leaving people who worked their whole lives with nothing. Yet union's are the bad guys destroying everything:huh? This thread is a perfect example, all the anti union people were quick to point and say....I told you so.....yet when more facts, and dare I say the truth starts coming out we see that it had a small part in this train wreck.



Sent from my Nook Tablet using Tapatalk 2

[Ruggles]

More proof union basically suck IMO.

Don't care about the nasty yellow cream cakes but I do love them snowballs

[Deanster]

Interesting... This article claims that the bakers were getting pay 25-30% above the national average for the category, AFTER the previous cuts from prior bankruptcies.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hostess-shrugged-2012-11

It also seems like the union work rules were remarkably onerous, requiring bread and cake products to be delivered to stores in separate trucks, each with its own driver AND a second guy to help bring the stuff into the store. Drivers weren't allowed to load their own trucks, and bread-loading workers weren't allowed to load cake.

Also $52 MILLION in workers comp claims, in 2011 alone.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...646698662.html

If you access it from Google, WSJ won't hassle you about a subscription.

https://www.google.com/search?client...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

4 or six guys doing a job that could have been done by one...

remarkable.

[dan1488]

just checked my local craigslist and they are selling all of the hostess brands, should have stocked up I guess.

[devildog2067]

Originally Posted by berto62

What I find confusing is people trying to vilify unions when CEO's and CFO's and Cwhateverthe****o's are running these company's into the ground

What I find confusing is people who spout off when they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about.

The current CEO of Hostess is a man with a long history of working with distressed companies in turnaround. It's not an easy job, and not a lot of people can do it.

walking away with millions

Millions? The C-level executive team at Hostess has been on a $1 salary since the spring.

and leaving people who worked their whole lives with nothing.

The people who "worked their whole lives" (by which I assume you mean, the bakers) walked away with exactly the same thing as the other people who "worked their whole lives" at being management. Management works too, you know--it's different work, but it's still work. In some ways it's easier, in many ways it's harder.

At any rate--everyone walked away from the company with the wages they'd been paid, from the bakers to the CEO (and remember the CEO's salary right now is a dollar).

This thread is a perfect example, all the anti union people were quick to point and say....I told you so.....yet when more facts, and dare I say the truth starts coming out we see that it had a small part in this train wreck.

What "facts" are you talking about?

The facts are these: the company has been circling the drain since 2004 (the first time it went into bankruptcy).

It has received huge injections of cash (hundreds of millions of dollars) from investors who will never see their money again.

When management asked the union to go back to work because there would not be enough cash to operate the business without continued production and sales.

The union refused.

The company is liquidating.