Hostess union workers think they'll be rehired.

[SHOOTALL]

Drag strip engines often blow up in your face....Best long running vehicles are an integration of all parts...some say like a symphony. Labor is the negine in the corporate vehicle_ _it requires a little care and feeding like any engine you depend on. I'm thinking I wouldn't want to work for you unless I'm partial to being depressed or opressed.
.
..TM7

Well we have good employees who do quite well. They seem to enjoy working with me. We have health insurance while much of our competition does not. We have 401 K while most don't , paid holidays and vacation . They drive trucks home etc. None are depressed and certinaly not opressed.
Our management and those in the office are instilled with one thing the only profit comes from the billing of both plumbing and HVAC install. It is everyone elses job to supply them with work, material, education and anything else to get the job done at a profit.
 Our work force is not like a drag engine it is more like one in a dozer , strong and dependable . We seldom over rev. it .
 
BTW I agree you would not work for me 

[SHOOTALL]

Did I mention I still work on the jobs and catch service calls .........They work with me not for me. Its my attitude toward employees.

[Conan The Librarian]

Working with people implies they are resources. The Hostess situation sounds more like the union and the unionized employees are adversaries more than anything else.

[kennyd]

Well, a letter in the newspaper answered my biggest question, though not verifiable.  The bakers made on average $7.00 per hour. So the overpriced twinkies were not a product of high labor, but it seems more to bad management decisions and a changing market.   Maybe they could move up to part time at Walmart.

[SHOOTALL]

Drag strip engines often blow up in your face....Best long running vehicles are an integration of all parts...some say like a symphony. Labor is the negine in the corporate vehicle_ _it requires a little care and feeding like any engine you depend on. I'm thinking I wouldn't want to work for you unless I'm partial to being depressed or opressed.
.
..TM7

Well we have good employees who do quite well. They seem to enjoy working with me. We have health insurance while much of our competition does not. We have 401 K while most don't , paid holidays and vacation . They drive trucks home etc. None are depressed and certinaly not opressed.
Our management and those in the office are instilled with one thing the only profit comes from the billing of both plumbing and HVAC install. It is everyone elses job to supply them with work, material, education and anything else to get the job done at a profit.
 Our work force is not like a drag engine it is more like one in a dozer , strong and dependable . We seldom over rev. it .
Good,,,sounds like everything is running Ok and unions not necessary...right now unless grave injustice or threats develope . only threat would be no work or taxed out of business
 
BTW I agree you would not work for me 
No problem,,,I haven't worked for anybody in almost 40 years....but sounds like alot of people wouldn't work for you.Why is that ?...or for too long. Don't know or care.  In my business I had the belief most of the time...that there is rarely bad employees.that must have been an interesting business really I have been worker and owner in the last 40 years and have seen both good and bad workers and owners. ..just bad supervisors who ruin employee potential..I have seen such supervisors also but have also seen workers who couldn't see an opertunity if it jumped up and bit them on the azz. ...unions do or did try to address this issue I can assure you any company worth working for will not tolerate such anymore as workers are hard to find and train. .At the time unions were started they did a good job of bringing safety to the work people of America. They also addressed real issues of fairness. But if you look the govt. has passed standards as to safety and are enforcing them . The govt. has also passed labor laws that protect the worker better than unions ever did. As we have seen time over the unions cost jobs , run companies to off shore workers and fill the pockets of the elite union boses at the expence of the rank and file. They are not needed anymore .
...
.....TM7

[JustaShooter]

Well, a letter in the newspaper answered my biggest question, though not verifiable.  The bakers made on average $7.00 per hour. So the overpriced twinkies were not a product of high labor, but it seems more to bad management decisions and a changing market.   Maybe they could move up to part time at Walmart.

According to http://www.examiner.com/article/hostess-brands-goes-out-of-business-after-employees-say-no-wage-cut in Emporia, Kansas the wage is more than double that, and they are likely at the lower end of the scale.  In places with higher cost of living it is likely higher.  According to http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2012/nov/27/hostess-wages-reasonable/ the average hourly wage is $16 with a ceiling of $17.10.

[Shu]

I really don't care about Unions. If you really want to be in one fine. if you don't thats fine also.
I just don't know what they are really good for. I have never been around them much and have not really heard anything positive about them. Except for coal miners living in company towns paid with company script.
This day and age what does a Union actually provide?

[SHOOTALL]

Shu , I have worked on jobs that were a split of union non union contractors most of my working life. Here are a few union demands that they would strike to get. At a plant in Chesterfield they had to have their own gate to enter and leave., on a school job they had to have a brick layer stand by a ditch and watch , not do anything but watch since we were placing a brick under the ends of each pcs. of pipe. two examples of many .

[ChungDoQuan]

The talking heads on TV said that Hostess management had signed an agreement with the union to hold company contributions to the employee pension plan for 5 years while they "developed new products and upgraded their existing line." Instead, they tripled the pay for their executives. The concessions they wanted from the union was mainly to let them out of paying into the employees' retirement plan, as they agreed. That used to be called "Apache management," (apologies to any Native Americans) because some Cavalry officers claimed that the Apaches would ride a horse to death to outrun the Cavalry, then just get on another horse. I don't know if that ever actually happened--- most Native American cultures depended on their horses an awful lot to just ride them to death, I would think. Anyway, the Hostess situation is a goods example of the people at the top taking too big a slice of the pie and killing their own company. That's why they freaked out when the judge told them they could not pay the execs their bonuses as part of the bankruptcy.

[SHOOTALL]

Your post sounds like the company was a crook. but to better understand we should look at the benifits the company had been paying and what the upper management had been giving up. Also if upper management held most of the stock etc.

[gypsyman]

I get a kick out of the pro union people that get upset about non union workers doing the job. Union workers scream about Walmart, but, who unloads the boats? Longshoreman. How many truck drivers are Teamsters hauling for Walmart? How much moves around on Rail? Railroaders union. Seems to me that working for a reduced pay, is better than not working at all. gypsyman

[Conan The Librarian]

I think it works both ways. The company was hobbled by the unions. That led to a management culture that ended the company in this way.
 
I'm not even in a union and I can remember in the 70s and 80s about how railroad and mining workers were screwed out of their pensions. Apparently people who got union jobs since then either didn't know the history or didn't care, because that put the writing on the wall for unionized labor in America.

[BUGEYE]

I put in 30 years at delta airlines, non-union, and they were a hard working group, with great supervisors.   across the ramp was eastern airlines, union, and they were a lazy bunch who hated supervisors.
I started on the ramp and worked my way up to one of the most important jobs there.
during that time I came across one "1" bad supervisor and he didn't last long.

airlines around the world studied delta airlines to learn their success secrets.  and it came down to the workers multi-tasking and being treated like the important people that they were.
we had the usual disgruntled lazy types who were pro-union but it was voted out.

that multi-tasking would equate to a hostess truck delivering TWINKIES and WONDER BREAD.

[Conan The Librarian]

I was in Miami when Eastern folded and it wasn't pretty. A lot of people assumed the company would stay in business because it was too big to fail. They were pretty top heavy with management and administration too. More bean counters than beans, if you know what I mean.
 
I was really sorry when Pan Am went out of business. I never looked into why that happened. I always liked that airline as a customer.
 
Eastern was ahead of its time because when they were distressed long before many other airlines were distressed. Many years later I saw other distressed airlines and the same crew and ticketing attitudes Eastern had back then were visible in the other distressed airlines.

[scootrd]

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