Some legal maneuvers sometime this weekend, we now might have a chance to see Twinkies back on the shelf.....A Judge rulling in something gives the negotiators another chance.....
Quentin
Firelock76Wish we were having this conversation in the depot around the coal stove with a good pot of coffee and some doughnuts
Since this is the Anything Else Non-Topical thread, I will jump in here.
That is the one thing my Dad didn't miss after becoming a Dispatcher. Despite being told by his supervisors and his customers that he was a very good Station Agent, he was really happy that his days of dealing with the public had come to an end. He enjoyed being an Operator back in Steam Days, working in Bunkhouse stations in the middle of nowhere, and being a Dispatcher, more than he ever did working as an Agent. Funny thing was, he never told anyone that until years after he had retired.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Re Twinkies: Did you here Hostess Brands filed for bankrupcy?
Rgds IGN
Actually, Firelock, I am not inclined to shoot from the hip and point out all the bad things the people in charge are doing. My experience is that the people in charge have usually been doing their job for many years and are very familiar with their own situation, what they can accomplish and why.
But the older I get the more I am seeing experts who really botch up the job they are responsible for. I wonder why this is happening.
As far as the Hostess Twinkie issue goes, first of all I've never eaten any or if I have it was so long ago I don't remember it. But I have to believe a big part of their problem is the changing tastes of American consumers. What I have seen is people who want a cup of coffee and a snack (and I am one of them) often go for a snack that is not easily industrially produced. I like a bagel with cream cheese or butter. I have never eaten a single mass produced industrial bagel that is any good but many bakeries make very good bagels. So the large industrial producer (which is what Hostess was) really cannot compete with smaller places even though Hostess can put a lower price on its products.
So I agree. This is a good topic for a coffee pot and pot belly stove conversation. Maybe we'll have it some day.
Considering a slave working for slave wages and an employee thinking he or she is underpaid, there is an analogy in that both are dissatisfied with their compensation. But I don’t see any analogy between slavery and an employer/employee relationship.
The latter is a voluntary contract, and the former is imprisonment. Unlike an employee, a slave cannot quit. Any employee can believe they are not being paid enough. All they can do about it is quit and seek a better opportunity to sell their services. They have the freedom to quit.
What more do they deserve?
jeffhergert It's always easy to say that everyone else should work for less. Slavery would be bad for business. You have to provide room and board for slaves. That can hurt the bottom line no matter how little provision is made. Much better to pay wages. That way when you pay a rate that will barely cover the needs of life, you can just blame the employees for not managing their money better. I know the wages in this case weren't poverty level wages, but that's the way they are trending. You know the next time the contract would come up there would be calls for more concessions. I doubt employees can ever price themselves attractively to employers, except maybe those employees who are at or above a certain level of management. Jeff
It's always easy to say that everyone else should work for less.
Slavery would be bad for business. You have to provide room and board for slaves. That can hurt the bottom line no matter how little provision is made. Much better to pay wages. That way when you pay a rate that will barely cover the needs of life, you can just blame the employees for not managing their money better.
I know the wages in this case weren't poverty level wages, but that's the way they are trending. You know the next time the contract would come up there would be calls for more concessions. I doubt employees can ever price themselves attractively to employers, except maybe those employees who are at or above a certain level of management.
Jeff
Yep, you're correct. In American history classes at the school level, they always seemed to skip over the plight of early American paid workers (esp in the industrialized northeast) and focused solely on the slave issues (down south). Not that the latter is less important, but the former should be given its due.
Union/employee issue or not, apparently the company just wasn't making a product attractive to the american consumer. All the jokes about twinkies aside - when was the last time anyone here bought any? Around here, they were always a distant 3rd to Little Debbie and especially Tastycakes. (who has gone through issues of their own, but are always tweaking their product line to adapt, hopefully with success).
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zugmann Bucyrus Yes, I can understand hostility and blame toward the management, but that is somewhat beside the point I am making. All I am saying is that companies do not owe anyone a job, so they are not responsible for jobs lost if they go out of business. They have no obligation to the employees to manage the company with enough competence to make it survive. The only control the employees have over the jobs is to price themselves attractively to the employer. No, they don't owe anyone a job, but they sure can't grow a business without employees (unless we are going to legalize slavery). .
Bucyrus Yes, I can understand hostility and blame toward the management, but that is somewhat beside the point I am making. All I am saying is that companies do not owe anyone a job, so they are not responsible for jobs lost if they go out of business. They have no obligation to the employees to manage the company with enough competence to make it survive. The only control the employees have over the jobs is to price themselves attractively to the employer.
Yes, I can understand hostility and blame toward the management, but that is somewhat beside the point I am making.
All I am saying is that companies do not owe anyone a job, so they are not responsible for jobs lost if they go out of business. They have no obligation to the employees to manage the company with enough competence to make it survive.
The only control the employees have over the jobs is to price themselves attractively to the employer.
No, they don't owe anyone a job, but they sure can't grow a business without employees (unless we are going to legalize slavery). .
No John, I don't feel like I've been beaten up on, so don't worry. Wish we were having this conversation in the depot around the coal stove with a good pot of coffee and some doughnuts, who knows how many of the worlds problems we'd solve?
And maybe a bit of the "hard stuff" if nobody's lookin'?
Firelock76 Please don't misunderstand my earlier posts. There's plenty of blame to go around, but I put the major part of the responsibility on Hostess management. How do you take a colossus and major American icon like Hostess and run it into the ground? What kind of incompetance does it take to do that? Well, it's not the first shocking business failure in history and I'm sure it won't be the last. Let me finish with a quote from General Patton that applies to just about any kind of endevour: "If everybody's thinking alike, then nobody's thinking!" Applies to business as well as the art of war. If you feel like I've been beating up on you, Firelock, please accept my apology. We are having a conversation. After all nothing you write or I write will have any effect on the Twinkie decision. Whether or not we agree doesn't matter (although I agree with you far more than I disagree). It is just that the American landscape is littered with once proud and profitable companies which, after many decades of success, went broke. The example that jumps into my mind in the Penn Central. Granted, times change and the business climate changes with them. But downsizing is one thing; complete failure is something else again. A famous economist--I think he was Shrumpater--wrote about "creative destruction." Maybe that is what is going on here.
Please don't misunderstand my earlier posts. There's plenty of blame to go around, but I put the major part of the responsibility on Hostess management. How do you take a colossus and major American icon like Hostess and run it into the ground? What kind of incompetance does it take to do that? Well, it's not the first shocking business failure in history and I'm sure it won't be the last.
Let me finish with a quote from General Patton that applies to just about any kind of endevour: "If everybody's thinking alike, then nobody's thinking!" Applies to business as well as the art of war.
If you feel like I've been beating up on you, Firelock, please accept my apology. We are having a conversation. After all nothing you write or I write will have any effect on the Twinkie decision. Whether or not we agree doesn't matter (although I agree with you far more than I disagree).
It is just that the American landscape is littered with once proud and profitable companies which, after many decades of success, went broke. The example that jumps into my mind in the Penn Central. Granted, times change and the business climate changes with them. But downsizing is one thing; complete failure is something else again.
A famous economist--I think he was Shrumpater--wrote about "creative destruction." Maybe that is what is going on here.
The only blame that I can see in this is whether or not the employees blame themselves; or possibly blame the union if they feel the union should have made consessions on behalf of the employees. Those blames would be based on the feeling that they had the opportunity to avoid the loss but missed it.
Firelock76 If it meant saving their jobs the bakers union should have made the concessions, even if it hurt. The Teamsters striking Hostess made the concessions, and the Teamsters are no strangers to playing hardball with management. At any rate, the bakers aren't the first union members to strike themselves out of a job. Anyone remember the "World-Journal-Tribune" newspaper in New York? It died as a result of a pressmens strike back in the mid-Sixties. The plain fact of the matter is in the sour economy we've got now a crummy job is still better than no job at all. It's sad.
If it meant saving their jobs the bakers union should have made the concessions, even if it hurt. The Teamsters striking Hostess made the concessions, and the Teamsters are no strangers to playing hardball with management. At any rate, the bakers aren't the first union members to strike themselves out of a job. Anyone remember the "World-Journal-Tribune" newspaper in New York? It died as a result of a pressmens strike back in the mid-Sixties. The plain fact of the matter is in the sour economy we've got now a crummy job is still better than no job at all.
It's sad.
If you read both sides of the issues, it isn't as clear cut as the mainstream media portrays. Truth probably somewhere in between. But I don't buy the "it's all the workers fault!" BS.
I always found it funny how when a company succeeds, it's because of the excellent management. But if a company fails, it's because of those greedy employees. Double standard much?
Bucyrus The biggest reaction seems to be a worry about the possible loss of twinkies. I agree that losing the product will not occur. The real loss was the 1800 jobs. Did those people give up their jobs thinking it better to leave than to work for less? Or did it backfire on them because they did not realize they were driving too hard of a bargain?
The biggest reaction seems to be a worry about the possible loss of twinkies. I agree that losing the product will not occur. The real loss was the 1800 jobs.
Did those people give up their jobs thinking it better to leave than to work for less?
Or did it backfire on them because they did not realize they were driving too hard of a bargain?
Or was there writing on the wall that the company was going to shut down no matter what?
This just shifts the blame from the managers/owners to the employees.
The reaction on the general public's part to Hostess quiting is amazing. I expect, as evidently does Hostess management that the brands will be picked up by other companies. Maybe for a while there won't be Twinkies, Cup Cakes etc, but I bet the brand will be back.
In the meantime, there are other snack food companies that make clones of the same products. Maybe the names aren't the same, but the products are.
I've noticed a few references to this being similar to the Rock Island's demise. I bet the outcome will be similar. After liquidating and paying off it's bills, the RI estate still had something like 400 million dollars in cash and assests left. Maybe Hostess management figured they would be better off to shut down the company and sell it off.
After all, sugar and fat are the new tobacco.
I guess a lot of peolel will miss that al time favorite...the DEEP FRIED TWINKIE:
http://www.degraeve.com/reference/recipes/twinkies.php
http://www.abekleinfeld.com/images/Patty%20&%20Kids%20Visit%206-05/Deep-Fried-Twinkies-6-05.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tzg6Ie3ajSM/T2pykMHiDkI/AAAAAAAAAPw/NSUUGhvGutk/s1600/deep-fried-twinkie.jpg
I am not suggesting that three more weeks of the status quo would have turned it around. I am just asking if it were possible to do it over, is there any descision by anybody that could have saved the day?
Could the unions have decided the fate of the company within the last days by taking concessions whereby the company would have decided to continue?
It does not seem like companies can be blamed for going out of business. They are what they are, and there is no guarantee that the will be run by brilliant business people who will keep them prosperous. Businesses have a right to fail.
I guess what it boils down to is this question:
Do the people who lost their job feel that it was a better outcome than making more concessions?
Rolling back the clock three weeks wouldn't have done any good. Serious questions should have been asked at the first bankruptcy in 2004. What are we doing wrong? If we're losing market share, why? Are there underperforming articles in the product line that should be dropped? Should some plants in expensive areas of the country to do business be closed in favor of plants in areas with a more favorable business climate? Who are we aiming the product line at? Should that be changed? And so on and so forth.
Look, I don't claim to be a marketing genius nor do I claim to have a genius for making money, if I did I'd be working at a different job than I've got now. But the questions I posted above are all common sense questions that someone should have asked a long time ago. Unless of course the hedge fund that owns Hostess wanted to run the company into the ground and sell off the assets and brand names anyway, make a quick profit and run. Who knows? Nothing would surprise me anymore.
Bucyrus So if you could roll the clock back three weeks, is there anything that could have been done differently to avoid the demise of the Hostess company and the loss of all those jobs?
So if you could roll the clock back three weeks, is there anything that could have been done differently to avoid the demise of the Hostess company and the loss of all those jobs?
Eat more twinkies?
But Firelock, that is what our system of free enterprise is all about. If a person knows how to manipulate financial markets he can get control of all sorts of things whether he knows anything about the business or not. No where is this made more clear than in the history of American railroads after the Civil War.
There's plenty of blame to go around in the "Hostess" collapse, but in my opinion this is just another symptom of a larger disease. There's too many companys being run by MBA "Whiz Kids" who may have a headfull of business theories, and who understand dollars and cents, but have NO understanding of the business they're trying to run. From what I've read "Hostess" is/was owned by a hedge fund who parachuted their own people in to run it who had no experience in the bakery business.
In the old days if you were a management prospect you started at the bottom of the management rung and weren't promoted until those above you knew your skills and knew that you understood the business. That doesn't seem to be true anymore. Was the old system foolproof? No, but most of the time it worked.
By the way, you know that comic strip "Dilbert" by Scott Adams? The reason it's so funny is because it's so true.
Surely, some company will purchase the "rights" to manufacture "Twinkies", after this situation settles down...That product surely has value.
I haven't had one in years, but since I've been made aware of them now....I certainly will look and see if I can find some before they are completely not available. Had completely forgot all about them.
Hostess is now officially the ROCK ISLAND of junk food snack companies.
So if anyone wants Twinkies they better buy them now since Hostess is getting liquidated.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-hostess-brands-seeks-court-permission-to-liquidate-20121116,0,3175964.story
Hostess Brands on Friday received a court order for an expedited hearing on its request toliquidate.
The hearing on liquidation request is scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern time Nov. 19, in bankruptcy court in White Plains, N.Y.The bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, said it had sought court permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers.Hostess, which has about $2.5 billion in sales from a long list of iconic consumer brands of snack cakes and breads said it had suspended operations at all of its 33 plants around the United States as it moves to start liquidating assets."We'll be selling the brands and as much of the infrastructure as we can," said company spokesman Lance Ignon. "There is value in the brands."Hostess said a strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that began last week had crippled its ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities, and it had no choice but to give up its effort to emerge intact from bankruptcy court.The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs.
In the Chicago area, Hostess employs about 300 workers making CupCakes, HoHos and Honey Buns in Schiller Park. Hostess also has a bakery in Hodgkins, where 325 workers make Beefsteak, Butternut, Home Pride, Nature’s Pride and Wonder breads.
Hostess spokesman Tom Becker confirmed that Hostess plants have closed, and the local factories in Hodgkins and Schiller Park ran their last production Friday morning. The company also has a plant in Peoria.Calls to the Hodgkins and Schiller Park plants were not answered."I don't think it's a stretch to say there's a lot of sadness today," Becker said, adding that "18,500 people had jobs yesterday and knew they weren't going to have jobs anymore when they woke up today," referring to Hostess' total employee base. "It's an extremely difficult decision for the company to have to make to shut down but unfortunately without the full involvement of its employees at the bakery, the company was unable to continue." A statement on the Hostess Brands website begins with "Hostess Brands is closed."
The Ministry of Railways has lost some of its extraordinary powers now that its independent courts have been completely transferred to the local judicial system, marking the completion of the transition to civilian rule of railway's police, courts and prosecutor's offices.First established in 1954, the railway's 58 intermediate and 17 lower courts had the right to handle economic disputes and cases relating to crimes committed on railway property.............
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/7998732.html
The article does not say anything about Chinese Railroad judges in the style of classic American frontier judges. Maybe there were none. What if a latter day Judge Roy Bean ruled on the right of way?
http://www.texasescapes.com/They-Shoe-Horses-Dont-They/Ten-Things-You-Should-Know-about-Judge-Roy-Bean.htm
You don't like the verdict. Appeal it to the undocumented passengers in 15th box car back.
If you were the only law between the right of way fences, what rulings would you issue?
Murray I saw this in today's "Christian Scien Monitor": "2014 Corvette so different, GM will shut down plant to retool" "2014 Corvette will carry over only two parts from the current model. So GM's Bowling Green, Ky., plant will have to close for six months to get ready to build 2014 Corvette." http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/1019/2014-Corvette-so-different-GM-will-shut-down-plant-to-retool
I saw this in today's "Christian Scien Monitor":
"2014 Corvette will carry over only two parts from the current model. So GM's Bowling Green, Ky., plant will have to close for six months to get ready to build 2014 Corvette."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/1019/2014-Corvette-so-different-GM-will-shut-down-plant-to-retool
Murray...I believe I remember reading the next version of Corvette will have a smaller displacement engine, but put out more HP.
The Corvette name continues on to be still....a good conversation piece, and an interesting subject....Look at my Avatar, and see one of the earlier ones....'57 to be exact....Jean's and my first trip to Florida...in it. 1959.
Item: 53 years after I traded that car... in a far around about way {just recently}....a fellow from N Y State contacted me in reference to the fact he had a Corvette wheel cover he had used on the restoration on his 1956 Corvette, and on the inside edge of one of the Corvette wheel covers...was my name and phone number.....We went back and forth, and I was able to confirm...yes, that wheel cover WAS off my 1957 Corvette that I traded decades and decades ago....I now have photos of said wheel cover and the restored Corvette he attached it to.
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