The Evil Genius of the Baker's Union to Save Themselves and the Twinkie (?).

[evildevil]

The Twinkie is Dead! Long Live the Twinkie!
Did the baker's union get what they wanted all along?

Apparently, Hostess is close to selling off its venerable Twinkie brand to one of two investment firms.  You may remember that Hostess filed for bankruptcy last fall, after it was unable to come to terms with the baker's union.  Twinkies madness

Comments

[fenris_lorsrai]

Union-imposed work rules stopped drivers from helping to load their trucks. A separate worker, arriving at the store in a separate vehicle, had to be employed to shift goods from a storage area to a retailer's shelf. Wonder Bread and Twinkies couldn't ride on the same truck.

In no way does any of this make sense from an efficiency standpoint. I get idea you don't want things tacked on to contract that weren't originally there, but this is just batshit. The delivery guy should be able to, y'know, deliver goods.

[awfulbliss]

I've worked in three different workplaces with unions similar to the way Hostess is set up and in my experience that type of inefficiency is standard across the board. The extent to which mundane, easy tasks were needlessly separated as part of ridiculous union rules was pretty infuriating. You should have to employ someone because of an expansion in business, not because of rules like the one highlighted.

[carmy_w]

These sorts of rules are a very large part of why the railroads had to be rescued a few decades ago.

Every train had to have an eight-man crew (if I recall correctly), including a coal man and a brake man, in spite of the fact that the engines all ran on diesel instead of coal, and the brakes were all automatic air brakes, not manually operated.

[carmy_w]

There's a reason why the Teamsters is one of the most vilified unions in the US.

They may or may not be as crooked as a corkscrew now, but for decades, they were, plus being very nearly a wholly owned subsidiary of the mob.

[hinoema]

Trust me, I do know this. I am totally pro-union, but I blame the teamsters for intentionally destroying the rail system in this country in favor of less efficient truck shipping.

[carmy_w]

I got to thinking about this today.

That knife cuts both ways, in that the high union truck rates cuts the legs out from under contract owner/operators who are not union, due to backlash. Well, that, and the fact that some owner/operators will run a truck on the bare edge of safety, let alone on the bare edge of profit. They cut corners with maintenance, driving logs, everything. And, since they do so, they don't have any margin in the rates they will accept. Dispatchers learn this, and will cut rates accordingly, until even the cut-rate drivers scream.

My husband used to be an O/O; there were times of year that he would tell his dispatchers not to call till the rates went back up, and he'd stay home, catch up on maintenance, do odd jobs for other folks, and the like. Then, when demand went back up, he'd go back out.

[hinoema]

Exactly. Unions can be a great thing, but like anything else, can be a tool for criminal gains.