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Saturday, April 07, 2012

Twinkies Workers Get Screwed

The corruption of American capitalism by Reaganomic deregulation is on full display at Hostess Brands company. According to a court filing reported on by Dow Jones – Hostess may have violated Bankruptcy laws by looting its corporate treasury to pay executives massive bonuses just before their company went bankrupt. Apparently knowing that the company was about to go under – the Twinkie makers paid out all the company's remaining cash to their top executives - like CEO Brian Driscoll, who ran off with a 300% salary increase to $2.5 million while running his company into bankruptcy. At the same time – Hostess demanded its workers take drastic pay and benefit cuts – and reneged on its obligations to fund retiree pensions. This is what deregulated capitalism is all about – not running a business in the best interest of the workers, the community, or even the business itself – but instead running it like a personal ATM machine for a handful of fat-cat executives. This is a crime; unfortunately it's a crime that never goes punished in today's 1% economy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still think we shouldn't increase the taxes on these people? Job creators my butt.

Anonymous said...

This story is nothing but lies. The fact is that Hostess has been the victum of many different unions. Each brand that Hostess sells is represented by a different union causing the company to have seperate trucks deliver Hohos and twinkies, and each of their brands.
You want the truth? The truth is that Hostess was killed by union greed.

Anonymous said...

ow, 131, you really don't get it, do you?

You are advocating taxing the thieves. Well, okay, but is there a way to stop the thievery first? I mean to close a company for lack of revenue is okay as long as the empoyees get the shakeout change, the CEO's who failed go down with the ship, and everything is respecting the folks who made the company work, the workers.

Your solution just somehow promotes the thieves, and thieves will never pay taxes anyway.

Anonymous said...

Not sure if there is any similarity but this story reminds me of Preston Trucking.

lmclain said...

Are the reports of the huge bonuses paid out true or not? If true, please justify them. then explain the bankruptcy while they took this huge stack of money. I'll wait.