The Democrat Thread

[StrangeSox]

Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason they pushed new election law

 

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

 

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

 

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

[StrangeSox]

Probably, in the long run, the $34k to $0k. Because taking that $34k to $24k was only going to benefit the current private-equity owners and the workers would just be taking another beating in a few years. The bakers union was very well aware of what their strike likely meant, and a majority of their members still felt it was more important to make that stand than to accept those drastic cuts.

 

The problem with the "learn something useful" is that it comes with a hefty price tag more often than not and what's useful isn't static.

 

 

Poor management, not union intransigence, killed Hostess

 

Let's get a few things clear. Hostess didn't fail for any of the reasons you've been fed. It didn't fail because Americans demanded more healthful food than its Twinkies and Ho-Hos snack cakes. It didn't fail because its unions wanted it to die.

 

It failed because the people that ran it had no idea what they were doing. Every other excuse is just an attempt by the guilty to blame someone else.

 

That overlooks the years of union givebacks and management bad faith. Example: Just before declaring bankruptcy for the second time in eight years Jan. 11, Hostess trebled the compensation of then-Chief Executive Brian Driscoll and raised other executives' pay up to twofold. At the same time, the company was demanding lower wages from workers and stiffing employee pension funds of $8 million a month in payment obligations.

Edited November 27, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Cknolls]

Poor management, not union intransigence, killed Hostess

 

 

What work rule changes were implemented? He fails to list them...Probably because they weren't any...Two trucks delivering bread and twinkies from the same distribution center is not efficient. But union work rules say its a good idea. Probably would save on truck wear and tear too, no?

[Balta1701]

What work rule changes were implemented? He fails to list them...Probably because they weren't any...Two trucks delivering bread and twinkies from the same distribution center is not efficient. But union work rules say its a good idea. Probably would save on truck wear and tear too, no?

An extra delivery truck = $800 million in debt?

[southsider2k5]

What work rule changes were implemented? He fails to list them...Probably because they weren't any...Two trucks delivering bread and twinkies from the same distribution center is not efficient. But union work rules say its a good idea. Probably would save on truck wear and tear too, no?

 

I like the part where they mention their total debt before and after bankruptcy, but don't mention the pension debt until later, even though that was probably most of the debt, and non-dischargible.

[StrangeSox]

What work rule changes were implemented? He fails to list them...Probably because they weren't any...Two trucks delivering bread and twinkies from the same distribution center is not efficient. But union work rules say its a good idea. Probably would save on truck wear and tear too, no?

 

The Teamsters approved the final deal that the bakers ultimately rejected. That deal included work rule changes. I don't know if the details are public or not.

[Balta1701]

I like the part where they mention their total debt before and after bankruptcy, but don't mention the pension debt until later, even though that was probably most of the debt, and non-dischargible.

Didn't they already fail to contribute over $150 million in past payments to the pension plan?

[StrangeSox]

Didn't they already fail to contribute over $150 million in past payments to the pension plan?

 

They stopped making their ~$8M/month payments in August 2011.

[StrangeSox]

I like the part where they mention their total debt before and after bankruptcy, but don't mention the pension debt until later, even though that was probably most of the debt, and non-dischargible.

 

This Fortune article from July makes mention of the possibility of pension obligations being discharged and notes that this "often happens" in these types of cases.

 

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/...nkies-bankrupt/

 

they also make a similar charge about their debt level increase being unusual:

Those fortuities aggravated Hostess's two root problems -- a highly leveraged capital structure that had little margin of safety, and high labor costs. Neither problem was adequately addressed in the first bankruptcy, and neither existed to the same degree in major competitors like Bimbo and Flowers Food (owner of such brands as Nature's Own and Tastykake). On exiting the first bankruptcy, Hostess's total debt load was nearly $670 million. That was well above what it went into bankruptcy with in the first place -- an unusual circumstance that the company justified on expectations of "growing" into its capital structure.

But the company was dead wrong. Its debt sowed the very seeds of the next bankruptcy. Looking back on the decision to reinvest in Hostess in the first bankruptcy, one of the lenders now says, "If you look in the dictionary at the definition of throwing good money after bad, there should be a picture of Hostess beside it."

Edited November 27, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Bruce Bartlett (former Reagan budget guy, Heritage & CATO member, etc.) has a lengthy editorial in The American Conservative describing the epistemic closure that conservatives have been suffering from for years now.

 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/art...ased-community/

 

edit: Bartlett's section on his "race book" is pretty cringe-worthy and oblivious, though.

Edited November 27, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Hostess and the Limits of the Private Welfare State

 

Moreover, the structure of the company’s labor costs is not a completely bogus issue either. The main issue, as it often is in these cases, isn’t wages but benefits, especially for retired workers. When Hostess went into bankruptcy earlier this year, Pensions & Investments reported that seven of its eight largest unsecured creditors were union pension funds, and that the company faced $130 million per year of required contributions to these plans. And like all American companies that offer health insurance, they faced rising health care costs due to the U.S.’s uniquely irrational and inefficient system of privatized health care. It’s absolutely true that these benefits were negotiated fair and square, and the workers have every right to them. But promising future benefits without worrying too much about how to pay for them is a problem for a lot of companies, and it was a way of pretending to continue the Fordist compromise of labor-peace-for-rising-wages long after it had become inoperative in reality. Continuing to fight on this terrain will always put labor on the defensive. It’s worth noting that the Teamsters’ own position already included significant concessions on pensions.

 

It may or may not have been possible to keep servicing all these obligations while keeping the company profitable, under more enlightened management. But keeping Hostess in business so they can give people good pay and benefits to make Twinkies seems like exactly the style of small-minded Keynesian hole-digging that I criticized in “Against Jobs.” These workers deserve universal health care, a good pension from Social Security, and dare I say it, even a Universal Basic Income to support them while they try to find other jobs. The fact that we depend on a privatized welfare state where all these things are tied to jobs is bad for workers and bad for the country.

 

The Twinkie Defense, or What Does “Uncompetitive” Mean?

 

Somewhere out there, there must be some wage level that’s just right — that the wisdom of the market deems really and truly competitive. But how would we know a competitive wage if we saw one?

 

What we have here is a situation where a company offered a wage in the marketplace and couldn’t get any workers to accept it. Consequently, it went out of business. The word “competitive” gets thrown around a lot, often with the murkiest of meanings, but in this case there can be no doubt at all that a company, Hostess, was unable to pay a competitive wage. Ninety-two percent of its workers voted to walk out on their jobs rather than accept its wage, and they stayed out even after they were told it was the company’s final offer.

 

By all the canons of competitiveness, it was the company that was deluded. Hey, it’s a tough labor market out there. Hostess just couldn’t compete.

 

But the union got blamed instead, and that points to a fascinating aporia in neoliberalism. The competitiveness ideology keeps a double set of books. On the surface, it celebrates free individuals making voluntary agreements on a footing of formal equality. But look just a little deeper and it turns out to be a musty, medieval system of morality that venerates human hierarchy and inequality. If taken literally, an accusation of insufficient “competitiveness” would refer to a failure to buy or sell on the terms objectively demanded by the dispersed actors of the marketplace. But nine times out of ten, this literal meaning is just a facade for the real underlying meaning, which is all about policing the socially accepted rules concerning who is a worthy human being and who is not. Workers at an industrial bakery are losers. They need to take a pay cut — not so much to make the numbers add up (that’s a secondary consideration for all the commentators and columnists) but as a ritual affirmation of their debased social status. The refusal to take the cut was shocking and revolting — an act of lèse-majesté. It’s in that sense that the union was uncompetitive. The workers didn’t know their place.

Edited November 27, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

There was a modern-day Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Bangladesh. Right down to no fire extinguishers, locked fire exits and women jumping to their deaths.

 

PAYNE: It is tragic. I don’t think something like this will happen again. Don’t think that the people in Bangladesh who perished didn’t want or need those jobs, as well. I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, particularly when it comes to for-profit motivation, which is being assaulted. But, you know, it is a tragedy but I think it is a stretch, an amazing stretch, to sort of try to pin this on Walmart but, of course, the unions in this country are desperate.

[StrangeSox]

this one is for Reddy:

 

Did Sandy save Occupy?

The protest movement's disaster-relief efforts have helped it connect with the “99 percent” in new, meaningful ways

[Cknolls]

An extra delivery truck = $800 million in debt?

 

Wtf are you talking about?

[Balta1701]

Wtf are you talking about?

The scale of your anti-union complaint there seems incredibly tiny compared to the scale of the hole Hostess had dug for itself...as well as the scale of concessions their Union had already made (particularly if you consider the hundred million or so in missed pension payments).

[Jake]

Whether the union started off with too high of wages at some point is debatable. The reasoning for rejecting the deal is absolutely sound, though. They had already taken massive cuts to wages and knew their long worked-for benefits were to be lost as well.

[StrangeSox]

The scale of your anti-union complaint there seems incredibly tiny compared to the scale of the hole Hostess had dug for itself...as well as the scale of concessions their Union had already made (particularly if you consider the hundred million or so in missed pension payments).

 

The pension obligations were significant. Seven of the top eight creditors were pensions.

 

That doesn't excuse the mismanagement, though.

[lostfan]

Unions get reflexively blamed for everything any time something goes wrong. Ignoring the fact that there's 2 sides in negotiations. It's always the union. What happened is irrelevant, the union should've taken whatever s***ty deal was offered no matter how bad it was and be grateful anybody wanted to employ them.

[StrangeSox]

^American views of labor in a nutshell

[Y2HH]

Unions get reflexively blamed for everything any time something goes wrong. Ignoring the fact that there's 2 sides in negotiations. It's always the union. What happened is irrelevant, the union should've taken whatever s***ty deal was offered no matter how bad it was and be grateful anybody wanted to employ them.

 

...and unions brought that opinion of them on themselves over time.

 

Not saying it's right, just saying they helped perpetuate the situation they find themselves in now.

[Y2HH]

^American views of labor in a nutshell

 

Wrong. Not American views of labor in a nutshell. American views of labor from people who have had to deal with unions, however, absolutely.

 

Like at a company I may work for now or have once worked for...if a power cord happens to not be plugged in, don't touch it...because it's a union electricians job. You're supposed to call them to come up to your office and plug it back in for you. If you do, they have the option to file a complaint which can lead to termination for breaking union labor agreements with the business.

 

Like I said, s*** like this brings this opinion of them on themselves.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Y2HH

[bmags]

Wrong. Not American views of labor in a nutshell. American views of labor from people who have had to deal with unions, however, absolutely.

 

Like at a company I may work for now or have once worked for...if a power cord happens to not be plugged in, don't touch it...because it's a union electricians job. You're supposed to call them to come up to your office and plug it back in for you. If you do, they have the option to file a complaint which can lead to termination for breaking union labor agreements with the business.

 

Like I said, s*** like this brings this opinion of them on themselves.

 

Very true.

[Jake]

Wrong. Not American views of labor in a nutshell. American views of labor from people who have had to deal with unions, however, absolutely.

 

Like at a company I may work for now or have once worked for...if a power cord happens to not be plugged in, don't touch it...because it's a union electricians job. You're supposed to call them to come up to your office and plug it back in for you. If you do, they have the option to file a complaint which can lead to termination for breaking union labor agreements with the business.

 

Like I said, s*** like this brings this opinion of them on themselves.

 

You act like they made rules like that out of spite. It's always a response to an abuse. It's a vicious cycle.

[Jenksismyhero]

Every building downtown requires union workers, from electricians to movers. It's pathetic. When my firm moved offices, we needed to install an electric card thingy for the door to unlock it. The job took 4 hours with about 4 people. To run on electrical wire and hook it up. The grand cost? 3,000 bucks. That's the problem with unions and why the majority of Americans think they're bogus. We should have been able to hire a one-man electrician owning his own business that would have gotten the job done in an hour and charged a couple hundred bucks tops.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Jenksismybitch

[Y2HH]

You act like they made rules like that out of spite. It's always a response to an abuse. It's a vicious cycle.

 

They made these rules out of protectionism, and it drives prices up, not down. While these examples are all anecdotal, most people who work in an office that has union and non-union employees has experienced something like this. Again, these types of practices drive prices up via a form of forced non-competition. It's bulls***. And it's why I hate MOST modern unions.

 

Here is another example -- in the City of Chicago -- any underground piping is supposed to be clay tile, as if this was 1930. Not PVC...and why? Because PVC is airtight, and lasts almost forever. Clay tile, however, leaks, breaks, can be invaded by tree roots, and is outdated technology they force you to use in a legal sense BECAUSE it protects the fact that they'll be necessary to fix it in the future. This type of protectionism is f***ing bulls***. And no union member on this board will ever convince me otherwise.