# Hostess  out of business; 18,500 jobs to be lost

**URL:** https://forums.speedlife.net/t/hostess-out-of-business-18-500-jobs-to-be-lost/265503
**Category:** Shift518 Off Topic
**Created:** [November 16, 2012, 5:34am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/hostess-out-of-business-18-500-jobs-to-be-lost/265503 "2012-11-16T05:34:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 81

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### Author: ![Ollie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a87d85/32.png) [@Ollie](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Ollie)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 8:28am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/hostess-out-of-business-18-500-jobs-to-be-lost/265503/81 "2012-11-25T08:28:04Z")

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> [@Snky Snky Starbucks Meet Sunday July 6th!!!!!!!!!!!!!](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/snky-snky-starbucks-meet-sunday-july-6th/50861/110):
>
> I stopped reading at page 1 but I’de like to respond to everyone talking about the wages of factory workers.
> 
> Somone mentioned that a factory workers average pay is 20 dollars an hour. Call me insensative but to me, that sounds more than reasonable for an unskilled labor position.(not saying they arent good at their job, or that its easy)
> 
> This inablilty to survive on what I would call reasonable wages for unskilled labor then leads to Unions pushing for higher and higher wages to the point where companies have to succumb to these raises even knowing it will lead to some, or in this case everyone losing their job when the company goes belly up.

I agree with this part.

Unions fuck everything up. They make stupid ass contracts for these lazy fucks that say they will do this one job, for this much, at these times, for these benefits. It gives zero flexibility to these businesses. Look at the steel industry 20 years ago. All the integrated mills got beat by little mini mills because they were strapped down with union contracts and couldn’t reinvest in new tech. You get these union idiots who sign up to do one job and therefore only get trained for one job. The manager calls in sick or another important position, and the whole operation shuts down until he’s back because everyone only knows how to do their one simple piece of the puzzle. Without unions, people become more skilled and versatile because they don’t have any reason not to, they want to get promoted, they want bigger bonuses, they have incentives to work hard, and incentive for the company to actually do well. In a good business, workers get bonuses for productivity, aligning interests, instead of forcing the company to give higher wages for no extra productivity when they’re already going downhill. Labor should be somewhat variable rather than fixed when demand is fluctuating or at least be able to have workers switch roles during different periods to increase utilization of employees but nope, that would be against union contracts and everyone would cry about it.

So the company needed to lower wages or cut jobs to match decreasing demand. Wage cuts are better then job losses so they try lowering wages and renegotiating with unions which just fucks productivity even more because union workers have no reason to accept that because they’re safe behind their contracts and are, afterall, too uneducated to understand the whole picture. It all ends in a downward spiral of unsustainability.

The strike may not have put them under, but in the long run I wouldn’t be surprised if the unions did.

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