Unions, Managers, and the End of Hostess
As I'm sure you all have heard already, Hostess, the maker of Twinkies and other unhealthy snacks, has had to declare bankruptcy and sell off its assets. This has cost 18,500 workers their jobs, right before Christmas no less, and hurt the economies of cities where the company has operations.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the recent strike by the unionized workers. However, as my more left-wing Facebook friends pointed out, the company's executives were increasing their salaries at a time when the company wasn't doing well in terms of income. Lest you think this is just leftist agitprop intent on absolving unions from blame, there's this article from Daily Finance that confirms it.
When I first posted on this on Facebook, I criticized the union for killing the goose that laid the golden egg. However, with the whole thing about management raising their salaries when the company was hurting coming out, it seems they're not the only ones guilty of that particular folly.
Seriously, there's some major short-sightedness going on with both labor and management. Had the unions been more flexible (some of them were, but others weren't), that wouldn't have solved the issue of the managers raising their salaries rather than investing the funds in the business or the structural problems of the company not changing its products even in our more health-conscious age, but at least it would have kept 18,500 workers employed in the short run. And even though the Daily Finance article references how many of the managers agreed to reduce their salaries, others didn't. And then there's the lack of innovation or adaptation to changing tastes as well, which was another problem.
Everyone involved should have thought more about the long-run, be it their own employment (the less-flexible unions that didn't agree to the concessions) or the management who raised their salaries in a time of stagnant or declining revenue and weren't being innovative. Now everyone involved has no jobs and, for the moment, America has no Twinkies.