Hostess Saves Twinkies By Automating, Fires 94% Of Their Workforce (washingtonpost.com) 474
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Where Twinkie once employed 22,000 workers in more than 40 bakeries, their workforce is now down to just 1,170, reports the Washington Post, relying mostly on robotic arms and other forms of automation. "This 500-person plant produces more than 1 million Twinkies a day, 400 million a year. That's 80% of Hostess' total output -- output that under the old regime required 14 plants and 9,000 employees."
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
The Taste must have been fired also (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Insightful)
As if the taste was any better before.
Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:2, Informative)
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They used real cream back in the 1960's.
Welcome to the modern era of cost-cutting, shortcuts and quick profits. Long-term strategies need not apply.
Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Informative)
They used real cream back in the 1960's.
Welcome to the modern era of cost-cutting, shortcuts and quick profits. Long-term strategies need not apply.
No they didn't, that was back in the 30's when the twinkie underwent a big change, and the reason they changed it was because the key ingredient of a twinkie no longer existed. They made twinkies out of actual bananas. The reason they stopped doing both bananas and cream was because both were rationed in WWII (partly due to the gross michel extinction, with the cavendish not making it to mass market quite yet, among other general supply problems that existed at the time caused them to switch to vanilla creme.) After that period, everybody's palate changed and they adapted to the new taste. Depressions tend to do that.
Even if they wanted to go back to the old taste, they couldn't. The gross michel banana is gone and it's not coming back; instead we have the cavendish now which is very bland in comparison, and even it is going to die soon because like their predecessor, all cavendish bananas are clones of one another. This MUST be the case though, because real bananas that can reproduce on their own don't have much actual fruit in them, and have seeds that are as hard as a rock and will break your teeth if you try to chew them. We might be able to resurrect the gross michel with GMO to make them more resilient to the fungus that killed them, but who knows because we can't even have golden rice because Greenpeace declared war on it.
At any rate, back in 2011 Hostess reintroduced the original twinkie (as best they could; remember, no more gross michel, so it's literally impossible for them to reproduce the original taste without adding sugar and other stuff) only nobody really bought it. People got used to the post-depression twinkie as its taste had already become so iconic over the years, and so that's what people want.
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Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Informative)
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Seems endemic. Right after 9/11 my US company did exactly the same thing - fire half the workforce and gave upper management massive bonuses and raises. They then hired massive amounts of replacement workers in India with no idea what the fired people actually did. That anchor actually dragged down the ship as far as the main business went, but they managed to spin us off so their stock wouldn't go junk so my division actually survived and rehired some of the critical engineers those idiots fired. The same
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This isn't unique, new, or even unusual.
Layoffs result in immediate, long-term improvement to a comanies run-rate. That almost inevitably leads to a boost in share price which ties directly to the financial rewards senior execs get and have.
The business will figure out how to make due with crappy, underpaid, foreign employees (usually)...and in the meantime you cut out a huge amount of recurring cost. Thus, the company is in a better financial situation and bonuses all around for those who are in power.
Lo
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Management bonuses at the time were odd, but were mostly just golden parachutes as the original Hostess was folded and sold off.
Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but there's a bit more to the story.
What drove Hostess into the bankruptcy in the first place was bad management, lack of investment into their plants, etc., you know the usual. That management squeezed what they could out of the company, took their bonuses, and left the sinking ship.
They then brought in a new CEO, and he put out plan to right the ship. That included pay freezes/cuts. Two of the unions agreed to the new contract, and one of them double-checked the numbers, and they agreed management was not lying about this being needed.
One union refused. The union leaders recommend to their members to let the company go bankrupt, go to auction, and then the new owners would give them a better contract. Now, it should have been obvious that the new owners are likely going to be company in the same business, and like any merger, a ton of jobs would be lost. Indeed, that was the first thing that happened, where 2/3 of the plants were closed. These were well-paying jobs too, not something you can find baking just anywhere.
In conclusion, irresponsible management drove Hostress to the brink, and that one stupid union put the final nail in the coffin.
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They used real cream back in the 1960's.
So the legend has it....
The sugar rush from eating one of those on a little kid back then had about the same effect as taking one of Roger Ramjet's proton pills [youtube.com].
Roger Ramjet is great, super classic 1960s Saturday morning TV. Still funny after 50 years.
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Except that the research was proved to be a blatant public relations manipulation. The research was tied to the children only ever eating a safe amount of sugar based upon their dietary requirements and not the amount of sugar they could actually consume and normally would consumer when pigging out on candies, soft drinks and cookies. So yeah, kaboom sugar rush and sugar crash because they were consuming ten or more times the dietary requirement and not an extremely limited consumption of sugar in conjunct
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They've done studies on this, too, and yes, children told they were being given sugary treats were more energetic than those being told they were given sugar-free treats.
Lol, no one sat us down and explained to us that Twinkies had sugar in them. We just ate them, we didn't give a damn what was in them. But wolf down a package or two of 'em and yeah, we felt a sugar buzz. Or some kind of buzz. Maybe it was all the fat and chemicals they contained, but something in them got us jammin.
Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Funny)
"They used real cream back in the 1960's."
Hardly. I ate a few from the early sixties yesterday, and they tasted just like the 'new' ones.
Re: The Taste must have been fired also (Score:4, Informative)
Real cream never had the shelf life.
I was whipped sweetened lard, then it became whipped sweetened hydrogenated vegetable oil.
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I never really ate Hostess products, but the new company is not making a fresh product anymore. They consolidated everything to 3 plants and freeze it for delivery. What they are selling is not exactly the same, whether that is enough to reduce their sales is something else so we have to wait and see.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Taste must have been fired also (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming you don't have issues with Walmart, you may want to check out the fruit pies they are selling, two for a dollar I believe. They come in a little square box, each pie in a metal pan. Just enough for one serving. Usually multiple flavors of these things are stacked on a table somewhere in the bakery section.
The notable thing is a real award-winning pie bakery is the supplier for these things and they actually, astonishingly, taste like homemade pies. They're not frosted like the old Hostess pies but the pie itself is much better.
If you really need the Hostess style of pie, the ones made by Tastykake are good. Flowers Bakeries, the owners of Tastykake, also own Wonder Bread in the US. Flowers is known for being much more focused on quality than some other companies.
Re:The Taste must have been fired also (Score:4, Funny)
Who cares when you're stoned out of your mind? And besides, they did taste good. I used to buy their stuff by the truckload. They only went broke because I left the country.
Hey, i thought that was me...
Re:The Taste must have been fired also (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much sll pre-packaged baked goods have a sweet chemical taste. It's technically food but everything is processed to hell.
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Most of what you eat that's processed and carby like that IS cardboard. All the fat has been taken out and sugar loaded in at 2x the rate to trick you into eating it.
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I bought a pack last January, and they had zero flavor or taste. Yes, the texture and color are the same, but I might as well be putting paper on my tongue. Oh well, there are better desserts these days, especially from local bakeries.
I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Funny)
They are all walking my neighborhood playing Pokenmon Go. Every freaking one of them.
But really, 22,000 humans making Twinkies and Ding Dongs is a major waste of humanity. I could justify having like 13,500 making Snowballs, cuzz those rocked.
I get really strange results in 2016 when I Google twinkie, snowball, ding dong, and cupcake. Mom!!!!!
Re:I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Interesting)
Two ways to look at things.
1) Its a shame that we now have more unemployed people. While many of them are somewhat to blame in terms of not taking the initiative and updating their own skills having a post Hostess employment plan etc, I think we can agree there were challenges as well. Society has failed structurally to provide many with the opportunities and tools to keep a viable career path open for their working lifetime.
2) This is really pretty cool. There is a lot more competition in the packaged food space than when the twinkie first graced the scene. Its also true the relative cost of the goods twinkes were originally created as a substitute for have pretty well fallen to levels where twinkie does not make a lot of sense as a replacement good in economic terms. So what we have here is a very niche product, one that could not be offered economically using last centuries technology. Thanks to labor savings and efficiency though the die hard twinkie lovers can get them, and the rest of use vary occasional twinkie consumers can know there will be on on the shelf of our local grocery! The production, supply, and distribution chain is efficient enough to give us a crazy amount of choices!
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Society has failed structurally to provide many with the opportunities and tools to keep a viable career path open for their working lifetime.
Why is it society's responsibility to teach you job skills? Society (by which you obviously mean the government) already gives everyone 13 years of education (K-12), and if you walk away from that with no job skill that can't be better done with a servo motor, that is your own fault. I don't think there will be a big revolutionary change if we change the schools to teach for, say, 13 and a half years. People that are willing to learn will continue to do well, and the rest won't.
Re:I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll will note I started by indicting the individuals before I suggested society has failed. You are assuming by society I mean government. Government might be part of it but it isn't the whole of it.
The new economic reality for most people is you won't just not spend your whole career at the same company, you also won't do it working the same type of job. So yes have to continue to learn to do well, you have to be willing to take appropriate risks and exercise opportunities that come along. So why did these people not do that, why were they still aboard the sinking ship that was a bankrupt company when the doors closed?
Was that 13 years of government education not effective? I think we have to start there actually, my feeling is despite the fact there are a number of good dedicated teachers out there our 19th century education model isn't a good fit for the education requirements of today. I am not an expert in education so I don't have solutions but I can see that its broken. I also don't think just more and longer education is the answer either otherwise many people with 4 year degrees would not have been hit so hard. Maybe in fact primary and secondary school should be shorter and it should be normal to go to work for a time before higher education?
Has society come a part to the point where people can't get additional education. Do people not know and trust anyone enough around them to watch their kids for the evening so they can take a class? Have we broken up families, family units and the idea of familiar responsibility to the point people have no resources to turn to? Has the risk become to great, do people not have enough savings to risk taking a job that might not work out and having to find another? Why don't we having savings as a nation? Could it be the central bank keeps rates to low for two long? Have wages been flat because of to much regulation sucking profitability out? Do we now mandate individuals divert to much of there income to things that might not be appropriate for them like certain forms of insurance? Are we asking young people who should be building wealth early and as fast as possible so they can benefit form compounding to shoulder crushing tax burdens and provide subsidies to previous generations?
I am a conservative small government guy, many would label me radically so in fact. I am also not naive government is already big, and therefore the policies it makes have real consequences. Yes I would love to sign on to a plan of starve it until its small enough to fit in a bath tub so we can than drown it but we need to take some steps along the way. We need to identify what statist policy of the the last 60 years has broken in our society and stitch some of that back to together. We need to identify policy that does work so we don't throw the baby out with the bath. We need to look at how the economy has changed and make sure we are designing and offering solutions for 2016 and not 1976.
Re:I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Interesting)
What the OP means is that if say, you learn to do something new but can't get a job because no one will hire you due to your age, that is in fact a structural problem...
Our society has a very elaborate system where you must have the right credentials from the right places - and earning those credentials typically is a very long and expensive process yet most of the knowledge taught you will not use - and be the right age, and these days you need an internship where you worked for free for a period of time for a job you had to be competitive for, and so on and so forth.
Then you do everything right and they hire an H1B by scamming the Federal government.
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People are rational in not doing negative/uncertain return activities. Offer something more than blind faith and most will learn.
The wage gap between the educated and the uneducated is wider than ever before, and is growing even wider. It doesn't require "blind faith" to believe that you should study and do your homework, rather than cut class and watch TV.
Re:Nice, but try answering the question. (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps the degree in Communications wasn't the best idea for them?
Not all University Grads are created equal. Some of them half-assed and partied their way to an easy degree, which is worth every bit of the effort they put into it.
Re:I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out the third option.
1,100 jobs where saved by automation. Hostess went out of business and several other companies bought up the rights to the products that Hostess made.
Re: I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Insightful)
When Obama took office, 66+% of the US population worked.
Now, almost 8 years later, 62+% of the US population has a job.
So it is Obama's fault that the baby boomers are retiring?
Re: I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:5, Informative)
It's 66% of the population age 16 and above, with some minor exceptions.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics glossary [bls.gov]:
Labor force participation rate
The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population.
Civilian noninstitutional population (Current Population Survey)
Included are persons 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 states and the District of Columbia who do not live in institutions (for example, correctional facilities, long-term care hospitals, and nursing homes) and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.
It includes everyone who has retired and who lives on their own, and yes, the baby boomers have had a large effect on it. Ben Casselman at FiveThirtyEight discussed this [fivethirtyeight.com] a couple of years ago, noting that the LFPR began declining in the early 2000s. Short version: about half, maybe a little less, of the decline can be attributed to Baby Boomer retirement. Other factors, including more people in school and some people not returning to the workforce, account for the rest.
Re: I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. And when you scope out the very chart you linked to, that same rate during the 1950s and 1960s shows that metric barely ever climbing over 60%, only starting to rise about halfway into the 1970s. It plateaued in the 1990s and has been on a gradual decline since 2002.
That big hump couldn't have anything at all to do with the baby boomer generation entering the workforce en-masse in the '70s, and now starting to retire. Nope. It's all Obama's fault. That's the ticket.
Re:I Know Where The 22,000 Went! (Score:4, Insightful)
What 'skills' do you think a factory worker needs to keep up to date precisely?
Starting a business on the side that can eventually become a full-time business.
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No. Those three states where the layoffs took place are all "right-to-work" states. Indiana, Kansas and Georgia.
Nice bromide, but how about an actual answer? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's society's responsibility when it's a matter of deference to business friendliness, but it's the fault of individual when they can't second-guess the desires of employers?
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But really, 22,000 humans making Twinkies and Ding Dongs is a major waste of humanity.
I'm sure many of them can find jobs making hand crafted artisanal baked goods for upscale markets.
This is what America is about - overpriced goodies for the affluent.
Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't fire everyone because of automation. They fired everyone because the business was grossly inefficient and bankrupt, and it happened over several years. They automated because it was the only way to compete in their market and survive as a company.
Re:Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I came here to complain about the loaded headline. This isn't even the same company at all. The old one went into chapter 7 and got liquidated. There were no employees left. Those 1,170 jobs are essentially new jobs. Yeah, they likely pay less with fewer benefits than the old company, but they otherwise wouldn't exist without the current owners buying the assets, since nobody else was interested.
It could be that the submitter is trying to tank the IPO by spinning things this way so he can buy the stock cheaper.
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>"Those 1,170 jobs are essentially new jobs. Yeah, they likely pay less with fewer benefits than the old company"
Not necessarily. With being streamlined and more automated, the new jobs are usually more highly skilled with people being paid more right off the bat. Or, at a minimum, the pay might be more reasonable for the new skill sets instead of GROSSLY over-inflated by unions who raise wages not by increasing productivity or value, but by artificially creating labor scarcity.... Oh, and ultimately
Hostess wasn't liquidated (Score:3)
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It had mostly to do with the unions killing them in the first place. Labor became far too expensive, and it ultimately lost for everyone, including the union workers. Here is an old Forbes article: Click [forbes.com]
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And yet did any of the executives cut their salaries, stock options and bonuses to help out? How dare those greedy people in labor want living wages, that were probably 1/50th of what the CEO made, instead of being content living in poverty!
Re:Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume you could cut 20 million out of executive salaries. Divide that by the 22,000 employees, and you end up with about $900 a piece. Realistically, you wouldn't be able to take that much from the executives. When the employees outnumber the executive by 10,000 to 1, it really doesn't matter how much you cut off executive pay, because the cost of the labour will vastly outweigh the cost of executive salaries.
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Let's assume you could cut 20 million out of executive salaries. Divide that by the 22,000 employees, and you end up with about $900 a piece. Realistically, you wouldn't be able to take that much from the executives. When the employees outnumber the executive by 10,000 to 1, it really doesn't matter how much you cut off executive pay, because the cost of the labour will vastly outweigh the cost of executive salaries.
How can this be labeled Insightful. While true, it ignores the fact that the $900 per employee would end up in the economy, improve the employees living situation, add taxes, etc whereas the added millions in executive salaries ends up in tax free holdings or offshore investments. Saying that $900 per employee doesn't help things is an utter fallacy and shows a complete lack of understanding of how the economy works. It is also short-sightedness by the corporations as eventually the average person will n
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Most of it did not end up with gambling and alcohol, and the economic stimulus helped us greatly to avoid a recession due to the GFC.
Sorry to interrupt your blinkered right wing rant.
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Personal responsibility, capitalism edition: if you're succesful, it's your genius, if you're not, it's your employee's fault. Extra points if you imply those employees should work for free and are unethical if they don't.
As opposed to workers losing straight away so the management can keep getting their bonuses?
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Well, lets see. The article states there were 22,000 workers. The entire CEOs salary comes to about $2.22 a week per worker. The amount of the raise came to less ($1.57). You didn't give the salaries of the 9 other executives so we can only guess to the increase. But lets assume they were $500,000 and all nine got a 100% raise just for illustration. This still comes out to $3.93 a week per worker. With the CEO, that is around $5.50 a week.
If they were going to pay for it with an 8% cut in worker salary,
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My first thought on reading the "22,000 employee" line was "how long ago ago was that?"
Turns out it was over 12 years ago. It had fallen to 8,000 employees by 2011 and the company had already been through multiple bankruptcies.
Re:Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:5, Informative)
Management should have been thrown into the fire instead. They're the ones who ran the company into the ground, not the people who did the actual work every day. But guess who got fucked over?
Pretty much everyone got fucked over. The unions negotiated themselves out of a job, the owners lost most of their equity in the bankruptcy, and the debt holders had to take discounts. The people running the show now essentially just bought the brand and are justifiably proud that they aren't doing as shitty a job as the last group of people.
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Pretty much everyone got fucked over.
Except the executives who gave themselves generous raises. They didn't get fucked over at all.
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Yep, unless you think a big bonus followed by a golden parachute is getting fucked over. Won't someone please think of the poor executives, they got paid so much money when they bankrupted the company! Oh the huge manatee.
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I think you might want to reread that.
The unions made plenty of concessions over the years until near the end only to have the management take them, raise their own wages and then ask for them to be lowered more.
The Unions didn't negotiate themselves out of a job, the management mismanaged the company into the ground and now they are making it out of it by throwing those whom actually did their jobs under the bus while those who threw the company away are getting away with it.
The fact they were about to aut
Re:Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Headline is misleading and a little clickbaity (Score:4, Insightful)
Management destroyed that company.
Nuh uh.
Axiom: unions are evil.
Therefore unions destroyed the company.
See?
The biggest loser is uions (Score:2, Informative)
Before Hostess filed for bankruptcy, WSJ reported the delivery of Twinkies alone was controlled by two unions. Their work rules stated: "Drivers can't help with unloading, and products like Wonder Bread and Twinkies are not allowed to ride on the same truck." As a result, a one-man job has to be split into two or more. Now the new Hostess apparently doesn't have this trouble.
The moral is, if you realize you are a dinosaur, evolve now! Otherwise, extinction is guaranteed. Labor unions are so 19 century.
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As is actually living on your wage. And, coming to think of it, economy that's not constantly in some sort of crisis. It's uncanny: it's almost as if people being able to afford stuff is a requirement for making a profit selling it.
Oh well, I'm getting old and don't have children so I guess I won't lose much when the final crisis comes.
Chocolate Twinkies (Score:2)
I never liked regular Twinkies they were just not good to me, but Chocodiles as they were marketed or chocolate Twinkies as they are now labeled rock. Come to think of it I am going to have one now. MMMmmmm
No, they "saved" corp profits by Union busting (Score:5, Informative)
While the Automation kick is an interesting angle, lets not forget what actually killed Hostess -- vulture capitalists. [crooksandliars.com] These are Mitt Romney style assholes who swooped in, loaded the company up with debt, then pawned it off after leeching all the money out. Somehow though, it's not embezzlement when an investment company does it.
But it gets worse. The unions that took the blame? They were having their workers give upwards of a THIRD of their paychecks [alternet.org] just to try and save the company they helped build. And that just caused the vultures to trade the company around more and more.
So yeah, the automation is interesting, but lets not forget what brought us to this point. Vultures bought the company, embezzeled a shitload by loading on bad debt and pawning the company of as well as flat out stealing from the pension fund, and passing the buck to the next leech until they couldn't pass it any further. And now instead of having good quality Wonder Bread and tasty, if not exactly healthy, sweets like the Twinkie, we get mass produced automated crap.
The local Hostess bakery re-branded as a Franz [franzbakery.com], and the quality is really good. They also have a direct-from-the-baker storefront that you can go in and get bread at a huge discount. Oh, and they're union and pay their workers a good wage -- around $17 an hour starting. [sltrib.com]
As I said the last time this came up [slashdot.org], no American should EVER support Union Busting. Hostess is dead to me, and besides You can clone a twinkie pretty easily [youtube.com], which lets you do stuff like a fresh baked chocolate twinkie with cherry filling.
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Do the math first. 400MM twinkies, 22,000 people. That is an output of about 9 twinkies per hour per employee. Even if back in the day they produced twice as many, the efficiency is abysmal and there is no way that a Twinkie has sufficient value to sustain all those people on a liveable wage. The automated factory is about 380 per hour per employee.
The unions were part of the blame, and tried to be part of the solution, at least to some extent. Management also clearly had some blame... as did changing
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Re:No, they "saved" corp profits by Union busting (Score:5, Informative)
Do the math first. 400MM twinkies, 22,000 people. That is an output of about 9 twinkies per hour per employee. Even if back in the day they produced twice as many, the efficiency is abysmal and there is no way that a Twinkie has sufficient value to sustain all those people on a liveable wage.
Well, yeah? That's why the workers didn't just make Twinkies -- they also made a shitload of different types of pastries (chocodiles, ho hos, etc) and breads. Stuff like Wonder Bread, the Nature's Pride line, etc etc. And the 22,000 people probably weren't all making Twinkies to begin with.
Hostess -- under their name Interstate Bakeries Corporation -- was pretty damned huge before the Vultures got to them. Hell, before the health food kick of the past decade or so Wonder Bread was probably one of the most popular breads in the US.
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Ah, the robber baron's definition of "ownership". And this, kids, is why socialism is needed - to counteract this elitism and greed.
Doubling Shelf life? (Score:3)
How did they manage to double the shelf life? Double the preservatives? Double to toxins?
Kids are not eating them (Score:2)
I told my 7 year old nephew that he couldn't have anything sharper than a twinkie after he dropped something. He said "What's a twinkie?" which is way funnier I think.
The Rise of Automation (Score:3)
This story is nothing more than the natural progression of something that started in the early 20th century. We used to have people who held the title of 'machinist'. Now we have machines called 'CNC's which perform the same job to a better precision and produce identical parts. Being a machinist was an art form. Since the invention of 'machine tools' we have slowly moved away from the art to a repeatable process. Eventually factories will employ no one, or essentially no one. Stock will be dropped off and finished product will be picked up without ever encountering a human being. No lights, no breaks, no vacations, no unions, no variance. Perhaps a team of maintenance workers, but there would be no reason to house them at a single plant. This is the future of manufacturing.
Similarly we are automating the office. I am old enough to remember six-part forms and hallways filled with file cabinets. Now the same information can be housed on a single drive. I remember call centers which employed thousands of agents. Now there is a computer program which can get you through at least the front few interactions. As we continue along this line of reasoning, there are a number of jobs which will fall into oblivion just as the machinist has. The basic premise is if the human being is following a script, or a decision tree, or a detailed process; I don't need a human being for that. Humans are needed for exceptions, not wrote processing.
There is of course an impact to this move towards automation. We don't need unskilled workers who can absorb the necessary training through OJT. This then eliminates the need for a vast number of now middle class workers. They move into the poverty class and the societal divide widens. Not everything intended for good is limited to positive consequences.
If you are a factory worker now, how do you ensure employability? Learn how to repair robots.
If you are a low level office employee now what do you do? Learn how to automate your own processes.
For something a little closer to my own profession, if you are a Route/Switch engineer (Networking IT professional) what should you prepare for? Learn how to program. You job is nearly obviated now. It's called 'Software Defined Networking'. The days of troubleshooting OSPF/EIGRP are nearly at a close.
Automation is the natural outflow of specialization and advancement. As you work towards making your job more repeatable and predictive, you work towards ending your employment.
Re:Boycott All hostess produsts (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for the info, i will now boycott all hostess products. Twinkies suck anyways lol haven't eaten one in 20 years.
Go ahead and eat one of those still left in your pantry, 1996 was a good year for twinkies.
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There'll be a new sub-niche: Vintage Twinkies. Magazines will recommend years to get and which soda to eat them with. New fashionable eateries will pop up with a Twinkie list instead of wine: "Do you have the '96?" "Sorry, sir, we've run out, however I recommend the '01" "How about the '92?" "I'll need a credit card before I can serve you that"
Re:Boycott All hostess produsts (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise that the computer you're using is mostly made via automated processes, don't you? Are you going to boycott that as well?
If you're going to boycott everything that's made by a machine you're going to find yourself living in a cave and reverting to a hunter scavenger state.
Automation poses a lot of challenges for our society, but employing people just to give them something to do is not the answer. Personally I think we should reduce the standard working week by one hour per year until we reach a 20 hour standard week. That would allow society to adapt to the changes progressively over the period of a couple of decades while ensuring there are enough jobs for those who have been left unemployed due to automation.
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Yep, it's better to have 22,000 laid off because they went out of business than it is to have 1,170 employed directly at Hostess, and others indirectly employed at the robot manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, shipping companies, distributors, packaging suppliers, insurance companies, and all the other entities that support a running business.
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I'm sure they will fold up overnight due to your boycott.
Re:Union played hardball and lost (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the teamsters were making concessions, while the baker's union was playing hardball. IIRC it got to the point where the teamsters were actually complaining about the other union, which is pretty unusual.
Re:Union played hardball and lost (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get this attitude that Unions destroy everything, was management sitting on their hands. Looking into shenanigans of management.
The raises management gave themselves right before the bankruptcy
Brian Driscoll, CEO, around $750,000 to $2,550,000
Gary Wandschneider, EVP, $500,000 to $900,000
John Stewart, EVP, $400,000 to $700,000
David Loeser, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Kent Magill, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Richard Seban, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
John Akeson, SVP, $300,000 to $480,000
Steven Birgfeld, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Martha Ross, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Rob Kissick, SVP, $182,000 to $273,008
Re:Union played hardball and lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's assume they're all at the max. Total salary for that list is $6,351,508.
Now let's assume a "living wage" for factory workers of $35,000. That gives us $6,351,508 / $35,000 = 181 factory jobs.
You can complain about their salary, but where are you going to get the other $300,000,000 that was going to the 8500 workers who were laid off?
Re:Union played hardball and lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Less than that, even. You forgot the 7+% for employer's part of FICA and Medicare. You forgot whatever unemployment insurance costs in the states of operation. You forgot whatever the employer's portion of various health insurance or other benefits. Taking the general rule of thumb that employer costs are 1.25 to 1.5 times the salary, That $6.3M is only 120 to 144 jobs at $35k- so significantly fewer than your estimate even.
I think most of the complaints about executive salaries aren't really because that money could be used to pay employees more or pay more employees, because those numbers don't really add up; I think the complaint is more just in order of magnitude - 10 times might be palatable, but someone making 100 times the salary of another means that person earns effectively an entire lifetime of the lower salary in a single year.
Re:Union played hardball and lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Shorter version: Management is bad and they get huge paychecks -- therefore, anything the union does is flawless and perfectly justified, regardless of the outcome. You can always justify anything by criticizing someone else.
Thanks for letting us know.
Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's passed along is the cost of supporting the thousands of unemployed.
The old company went belly up, so those jobs were gone anyway. This is a new company and new hires, so nobody is "passing along" anything.
Even if that weren't the case and this had been accomplished by restructuring the old company, that's still good. Productivity gains are achieved by getting the same or more output using fewer resources.
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The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards.
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>"The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards."
I don't think the actual numbers are 18 fold. It is far more complicated than that. But in any case, say it was a 9 fold increase overall.... the reason the company failed is they priced themselves out of the market. They
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hostess has been dogshit for years. if it really was unions (as opposed to simple consumer preference or mismanagement or whatever) that killed it temporarily, then great. if it's resurrected by robotics, that's also great, but for other reasons.
Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned.
Of course not. Productivity gains don't stay concentrated in one company, they are spread through society. Overall, American productivity has improved by a factor of 20 since the late 1800s. So has the average worker seen their standard of living improved by that much? Yes, mostly they have. Improvements in productivity not only improve living standards, they are the ONLY thing that improves living standards.
If you really feel otherwise, then you can go live in a country that has not seen productivity improvements. Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, and Afghanistan are good choices. None of those have greedy rich people suppressing the workers by investing in capital to make them more productive.
Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sucks to be in the path of progress; that's why we have welfare. Unemployment is transitional, and it sucks to lose your job and wonder if you're going to spend 5 months or 5 years trying to find a new one; at the same time, unemployment tends to stay in the 4%-8% range, and 5% unemployment means either you or someone else is that guy wondering about where you're getting your next paycheck.
The difference is whether you stay in your comfortable seat and we all stay as poor as we are, or you get moved out of your comfortable seat and the other 95% of society enjoys growing wealth. The middle-class get to buy more toys (e.g. computers, cell phones, the things that made your programming job worth $144k/year in the first place); the poor get to eat more frequently, and maybe get access to medical care; you get to look for a new job, and a highly-wealthy society can supply better welfare to keep you from ending up as a beggar on the street with no job and no food while you do that. Probably less-good for you than not losing your job, but a lot better for everyone else at that moment, and better for *everyone* over time.
You would be wearing a loincloth and hunting in the wilderness right now, probably ill, with no healthcare and the constant uncertainty of where your next meal is coming from, if we didn't progress in this way. Your comfortable life today is built on the cycle of technical unemployment.
Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't say that for certain. Running machines requires skilled labor to maintain and program them. Pulling trays out of an oven all day doesn't. Programming and maintenance skills have a higher value, not to mention that the employee generates more revenue per hour than the manual laborer.
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This is a larger issue which requires a larger discussion, but essentially as we continually automate, eventually a point will be reached where most people aren't needed for work. It's fine and dandy to say "well, just educate yourself!", but not everyone is smart enough to do that. And you need to deal with those people.
Because, left unchecked, if we end up with a lot of poor unemployed middle intelligence people with not enough food, bad things will happen.
Also, if we end up with social distribution fixin
Re: (Score:3)
The consumer pays wages. If it takes 100 hours at $10/hr to make a product and that product has a 10% profit margin, then you pay $1,100 for that product; if it takes 50 hours at $10/hr and that product makes a 20% profit margin, then you pay $600. What do you do with the extra $500?
With prices coming down like that, you don't *need* as much income to live at the same standard-of-living. Part of this difference goes upwards, creating the growing income gap; the other part stays with the consumer. Thi
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The average single-family house in 1950 was 983sqft, and the average household spent 28% of their income on it; in 2003, it was 2,300sqft, and the average household spent 33% of their income on it. Roughly half of that expense is the actual rent or mortgage.
Housing prices do not equate to housing cost. The same $120,000 house in a 14% interest rate market is a $350,000 house in a 4.25% market. That is to say: it's a $1,085/month 30-year mortgage. I'm working off what people actually spent per square
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Another benefit not mentioned:
Now there are less humans stuck in a mundane dehumanizing job. Their Quality of Life will improve as they look for a more fulfilling job.
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Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Interesting)
What would you prefer? Force the company to rehire 22000 people for 5 minutes before it goes bankrupt again? Force then to raise the price of Twinkees to $10 each so they can make money with 22000 workers? Force us all to buy these $10 Twinkees? Subsidize the company so they can afford to sell Twinkees at a huge loss?
Please let us know what the best choice is.
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That is more-or-less what happened. Yet we still hear much complaining and few real answers from so many people.
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Different company. This one uses automation. They do not NEED those 22000. Why the fuck should they be forced to hire them?
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Cutting costs is called technical progress. It's why 30% of the median family's income went to food in 1950 (with 12.2% of America's labor force being farmers) and 11% goes to food today (with under 2% of America's labor force being farmers). The difference goes to suppliers (fertilizer, pesticides, machines, fuel, irrigation, seeds); farmers aim for a 20% profit margin, but typically make under 10%, as do their suppliers.
So we've gone from 12.2%+17.8% to 2%+9%, minus ~10% profits: the chemical indust
Re:So will they be passing that savings onto us? (Score:5, Informative)
They wouldn't have this problem if the baker's union didn't decide to be dickholes back in 2012. The management wasn't bluffing; there was a big consumer craze at the time for weight loss so their sales tanked. Other pastry makers ran into similar problems but they didn't have a union making unreasonable demands that they had no choice but to follow. (Krispy Kreme had to close a lot of their restaurants, Dunkin Donuts has turned more into a coffee shop than a donut shop.)
Remember, the teamster's union saw what was going on with the market in general and chose to accept the terms offered by the management, which was a wise decision because, remember, if you price yourself out of the market, then you won't be in it anymore. But the baker's union leadership really didn't give a fuck about the jobs of their employees, and Frank Hurt, a very rich union boss (with one of those "Cadillac" health insurance plans that Obama granted special exemptions to just because he wanted to favor unions) effectively spun it as "it's all the management's fault" while he could go home still having a job while the people he supposedly represents lost theirs, all because he refused to budge in light of an obviously changing consumer mindset, and the management doesn't have the ability to change that.
People just don't buy twinkies and donuts like they did in the 90's, and it's not likely they ever will again because now people have a lot more access to information than they once did, which means they're going to make different decisions than they once did as well.
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Agreed. Automation is great, but if the product suffers, what is the point? I have wound up just going to local bakeries for their specials. Their pastries may not survive a direct nuclear hit like Twinkies or Peeps and emerge intact, but they are likely a lot better for you, and taste a lot better to boot.
Re: (Score:3)
Start with a nice fluffy kind of rich cupcake with light creamy frosting, made with simple ingredients that you would find in your kitchen (flour, sugar, eggs, butter, real vanilla extract, baking powder, etc). If you have time, fairly standard kitchen equipment, and a little bit of skill, you can make these. Or, you can buy them fresh from one of a growing number of fancy shops that specialize in cupcakes (for a price, and you have to get t