Hello everybody!

From the WSJ comments section - long, but worth the read:

12:10 am November 13, 2012
St Louis wrote :

Unions are not what is wrong with Hostess. Management is what is wrong. My
husband has worked for WonderBread for 13 years. Explain to me how 4 mgrs
for 5 employees makes sense? Tell me how the company goes into bankruptcy
but can pay someone $1 million to "fix" the company. Those that
are not involved with the company can say anything. Its always the Unions
fault. If you only knew what was really going on within that company.This
statement is exactly what has happened. St Louis has been rumored to close
for at least 3 yrs now. I would like to see you go to work tomorrow and say
OK to any paycut. At some point you have to stick up for yourself.

I am a Hostess employee. Hostess stopped our pension contributions a yr
& a half ago. Then they gave the top execs pay raises of 30-80%. They
offered new contracts: no pension payments (no retirement plan at all for
union employees, but company management still gets contributions to their
retirement plans) for another 2 & 1/2 yrs, and then a 75% reduction in
pension when they do start paying into it again; we have to pay an
ADDITIONAL $200/ mo for health insurance; They took away our last cost of
living raise; they gave us an 8% wage cut on top of that; they are
outsourcing all of the office work to Manilla; they are closing 12 plants.
THIS WAS ALL PART OF THE CONTRACT THAT WENT INTO EFFECT LAST MONTH!!

The 3 bakery closures were not due to the labor strike, they were locations
on the closure list. Hostess used the opportunity provided by the strike to
close them w/o having to pay severance or give notice. Hostess will be
closing more plants whether the strike is resolved or not. We were told
that if both major unions did not accept the new contracts, Hostess would
IMMEDIATELY liquidate and we would all lose our jobs. Teamsters accepted
(barely), Bakers did not. Hostess didnt liquidate. We were told that if
there was any kind of a strike, Hostess would IMMEDIATELY liquidate &
we would lose our jobs. Bakers went on strike, Hostess didnt liquidate. The
Seattle bakery was literally 100 years old. They have been talking about
closing it for years. Of the 3 plants closed- the only one on official
strike was Seattle. St. Louis & Cincinnati were not on strike.

Its frustrating for Hostess employees working their butts off and taking
all these cuts, to still see Management driving luxury rental cars, flying
all over the county at $1,000/ ticket, having meetings in Vegas, spending
$200/ night on hotels, $75 on ONE meal for ONE person, golf tournaments at
$1,000/ea, throwing away MASSIVE amounts of product because they dont do
their jobs right, the list goes on.

We keep taking cuts and they keep wasting money. We took cuts a few yrs ago
(during the LAST bankruptcy) and the money was supposed to be used to
update equipment, facilities, 50 yr old route trucks; new product
development, etc. None of that ever happened. They wasted the money and
then came back to us for more. Where are their cuts and sacrifices? I wish
people out there would realize whats going on. 6 CEOs in the past few yrs??
Doesnt anyone see whats wrong w/ this picture? Theres no one there anymore
who truly cares about this company. Its nobodys baby. Nobody w/ the power
to make decisions loves it. They just care about the money. Its
heartbreaking. I dont blame any of the employees for finally saying theyve
had enough.
[blogs.wsj.com]

Matt



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