The Current Events Thread

[Lambeth]

It has to make the news somewhere. Pardon me if I don't accept your word but you're just a stranger on the internet.

[AngelicSongx]

R.I.P. Hostess

[SaintCrazy]

My friend's mom bought him 3 huge boxes of Hostess snack cakes today.

I was always a Little Debbie person, anyway.

[Kamak]

Nope.

To save everyone the effort (because I think this went like 2 pages last time?), Wry, that's not that surprising.

They claim bankrupcy every 3-4 years because they can't sell enough to stay afloat. As soon as the news breaks about it though, people go insane and buy up all of the Twinkies and stuff because "they'll never sell them again!" and the nationwide sales during that time pulls them out of the red so they don't need to go bankrupt.

Some people say it's scummy, but apparently people just really don't buy much hostess products despite the "nostalgia" of them being wonderful childhood treats. Until they get threatened with "never being around again". So Hostess is kinda like a person drowning in a pool. The lifeguard picks them up when they're about to go under, but they're left in the water where they can't swim.

Chances are, the sales from people freaking out will allow them to reach a conclusion. Or play hard ball with the union over the fact that they could hold out and go bankrupt.

[Exeres]

They're still gonna lay off a shitload of people. It's news.

[Kamak]

It depends. They're fighting for funding to keep the majority of their factories open through the bankruptcy proceedings. Also, when they've been forced to lay off people at factories before, they approached them later when those factories opened up again with their previous jobs. Kinda sucks while they're in limbo for a month or so, but, again, Hostess is at the mercy of whether the public is buying their products.

[Riku]

Doesn't help that the whole thing was caused by a single union bitching about wanting more cheddar.

[Lambeth]

R.I.P. Hostess

Good. Shit company with shit products. Not great that people are losing jobs though, obviously.

Doesn't help that the whole thing was caused by a single union bitching about wanting more cheddar.

probably didn't help that the ceo tripled his pay check among other things, but whatever keep blaming unions

[BurntToShreds]

Probably a little bit of both.

[Lambeth]

Well the ceo and the rest of the bigwigs probably have a bigger impact.

[Riku]

This isn't some rich kid in an office job saying this, Lambeth. I have worked several minimum-wage jobs with unions that claim to be looking out for us. My experience with all of them has been entirely negative. their contract mongering delays raises for people who had been there several years and deserved them. They raise rates for everything when they have done abso-fucking-lutely nothing for the past forty years, save for the contracts mentioned above. Even if the unions weren't there, we would still have the exact same medical benefits, because it's Corporate that supplies them and created the plans, not the union. None of these unions have been necessary since the industrial reforms and formation of state and federal labor laws. They are almost always redundant force there to collect a paycheck.

I'm sure that there are a couple of unions that actually do what they claim to help with in areas where regulations don't cover the necessities for that job (like mining in certain states). However from the three that I've been a part of, and the other ones I've heard about, the group that does jack shit in the helpful department is far larger than those that still serve their original purpose. And I'm not saying that they never should have formed. They were a necessary tool to get the attention of the government to implement the labor laws. But almost all of them have outlived their purpose.


I'm sure that the irresponsibility of the CEO had something to do with it, now that this information has been provided for me. But I don't know that you realize just how much some of these unions drain out of corporations. You might. I don't really know you.



Edit: Also, upon looking at the by-line of that article, it's a statement from the union itself. So it's basically each of them pointing at the other.

[Lambeth]

I think if the boss gives himself a cheddar blowjob his employees have every right to complain and yes strike. I don't think every union is god's gift to mankind but in this case the union was entirely justified in it's actions. I also don't think unions are outdated, not when corporations are allowed to funnel shit loads of cheddar into elections anonymously.

edit: I'm not sure why you're defending corporations. They're just souless entities whose sole purpose is to make cheddar.

[Kamak]

How about the people who didn't give a shit what the CEO is doing and just wanted to work?

Because of this tiff, they're losing their jobs that they would otherwise have if the union didn't decide to fight "for" them. You can complain that this wouldn't have happened if the CEO didn't start it, but frankly, who started it doesn't matter to the people that now have to look for another job.

And if companies are soulless entities, then unions are as well. Unions have done great things, but as Riku said, there's a lot of current bullshit going on with them. Teacher Unions are notorious for fighting for pensions, which, once teachers and professors have them, makes it nigh impossible to fire them once they stop doing their job. And keep in mind, people who work within the union (not people that are part of the union) basically get paid to fight for the people they represent. Not because the people need them, but because "things could always be better".

Many unions don't give a shit about who they're "helping", A 10% pay increase sounds good to them, so they'll fight for it and draw a paycheck while doing so. Once they win, they can pat themselves on the back for a job well done, even if the corporation has just shut down a factory to make up the revenue they need to fulfill what the union demanded.

unions are no different than corporations. We hope they'll be benevolent, but ultimately, they're making sure they get paid no matter what they do.

[Lambeth]

Just because a union kicked you in the balls once doesn't mean all unions are like that. Unions exist for the sole purpose of increasing the general welfare of workers in a certain labor or craft. I highly doubt all of them are secretly moneygrubbing non-workers.

Many unions don't give a shit about who they're "helping", A 10% pay increase sounds good to them, so they'll fight for it and draw a paycheck while doing so. Once they win, they can pat themselves on the back for a job well done, even if the corporation has just shut down a factory to make up the revenue they need to fulfill what the union demanded.

Or how about not tripling your goddamn paycheck? That way you can keep your goddamn employees and pay them a little more too. This reminds me of that papa john's ceo claiming he had to increase pizzas up to 20 cents to cover the cost of obamacare. Meanwhile, his house has a goddamn batcave. Why should employees be thankful to work for shit wages in a shit economy while heads of the company are rolling in cheddar?

[Kamak]

I like that you assume I'm bringing personal reasons into this discussion, but let's keep that out of this.

Also, didn't Steve Jobs multiply his paycheck by over, bodaciously, a million times what it was? Sounds really impressive, until you find out he was being paid a pittance to run Apple (though, admittedly, he wasn't exactly hurting for the cheddar at the time, but he wasn't big ball rich either) before he brought in the cheddar. Having context on what tripling means, and what his history of paychecks could be might be beneficial. Did he take a pay cut before this from past problems?

And also, assuming the CEO is a complete asshole, how does the CEO's dickery excuse the other side from any wrong doing? Hostess is a volatile company, meaning something significant like a strike or a factory burning down, which would be a minor setback/nuisance to another more stable company, is a death knell to them.

And that's not even something recent. Hostess has been on the tight rope since the mid 90's.

The CEO could have rocked the financial boat with his pay increase, but adding on the strike tipped the whole thing over, and now, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, because now everyone's in the water.

and frankly, there WERE people willing to work those wages. Hostess had a good number of people break the strike, it just wasn't enough to save lost production. Now, those people, who wanted nothing to do with the Union got fucked out of their jobs. Because the union was fighting for them. Because the union knew what THEY wanted. And that's the problem with unions. They have NO stake in what they're fighting for. If they lose a wage increase fight, they aren't losing those wages, the people they "work for" are. If their actions lead to workers getting fired, they still have their job. There's no risk to them, but they're playing with the lives of other people. That's not an infallible system of worker justice. That's stupidity.

So, how is it fair to these workers? Why should they be written off just because they didn't side with the union?