Flavor straws - remember them?

With the girth of the nation's waistlines, this is probably not a bad thing. Sadly 15,000 people are losing their jobs right in the heart of the holiday season.

Job losses are a shame. But my glucose level is happy.:icon_hungry:

I think they discovered flavor straws were actually very bad for your health

Remember the wax bottles with liquid inside? Wonder what that sweet liquid was. It sure was good.

OH yeah then used to chew on the wax. LOL.

Don't know if you remember blackjack gum, sen-sen, chiclets and so many more.

I have no guilt about anything food-wise. I eat or drink whatever I want. My mother instilled lots of guilt into me about food & eating, but something made me change when I was 26. When I was 26 my father died of a massive heart attack. At 60 years old he got up every morning of his life and did 100 push-ups & 100 sit-ups. He watched everything he ate. At 60 he could still fit into his WW-2 pilot's uniform. He did not smoke or drink. At 60 years old he was in better physical shape than I have ever been in my whole life, and at 60 years old he dropped dead of a heart attack while taking a walk. This guy's habits would have had my doctor doing cartwheels. His family had a penchant for long, long lives. And then after following all "the rules" he just dropped over dead.

When that happened it changed the way I think about food and how I eat. This doesn't mean I go home at night and suck on a stick of butter, but if I want it, I eat it. Playing by the rules didn't do much for my dad.

As far as how could I not eat a Twinkie? Don't know. Just never had one. I also don't eat candy. Can't stand it. Between the two it probably classifies me as a "commie". LOL.

According to the news the reason Hostess is going out of business is because the union is on strike and refuses to go back to work. In todays economy and jobless situation it is unbelievable to me that someone would be on strike when they should be thanking their lucky stars that they even have a job. Now those employees who could have been working won't be and I have no sympathy for them. I do have symphony for those that belong to the union and disagree with striking but wouldn't dare say so or could be physically harmed.

Twinkies
 

I haven't had a Twinkie since my kids were in pre-school, but Twinkies figured prominently in one of my all time favorite movies. Also, my favorite baseball team has pretty much played like Twinkies for the past couple of years.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V13CZnUCOaQ]That's a Big Twinkie... - YouTube[/ame]

I liked hostess cup cakes better....you remember it was the only time you would drink your milk...lol..

That is far from the truth:

"In order to “save” the firm, the operators of the company turned to the unions, which had already surrendered huge concessions just a few years back to turn the company around, and demanded an across the board slash, an additional 31%, along with eliminating the retirement and benefits entirely. It was a bridge too far. The union went on strike, and now the company has declared it will be liquidated.

in the end the union members would have lost more if they had capitulated to the vulture capitalists demands. By this move, they can hope to salvage the retirement plan, while if they’d given in they would have lost it all. $2 billion is a lot of money to just “give away” in negotiations. Of course the unions were expected to surrender despite the fact that the management company was asking the bankruptcy court to give their outgoing CEO up to $5.5 million. All of this was in addition to the 80% raises the executives were being treated to"

I don't understand the union leaderships sort of thinking at all. It makes no sense. If I understand the story correctly, the Teamsters had agreed to whatever deal had been offered, but the Baker's union was the group that dug in their heels. It's not like Hostess was making loads of money, they were bankrupt for pete's sake! We're not talking about downtrodden people slaving in coal mines in the 1800's here. Their give-backs would still have allowed them to do better than many people are doing. What a strange & sad outcome.

The bad part of this is that the vast bulk of the workers will have very little luck in getting the kind of jobs at the pay they were used to. While I'm certain that Hostess will sell off it's brand names to other baking companies, while those companies might add a few jobs to their roster, it won't even come close to hiring the number of people who now have no job.

I don't understand why so many especially on this forum are so opposed to unions. So many on this forum seem to think that workers can work for whatever is offered by business and business continues to say they can't afford to pay workers but out of the other side of their mouths pay outlandish salaries and benes to execs. It seems to me that many here feel that the workers shouldn't be allowed to make a living wage. Why is that? Most on this forum seem to think it's ok for pro athletes to bargain with team owners thru their agents and players unions but the working person should just shut up and take whatever the business owners think is fair. This, in a perfect world would work fine but corporate GREED gets in the way.

Greed
 

Maybe, just maybe, greed was prevalent on both the employee and the corporate side. Having said that, the corporation will be liquidated on paper and the employees will be without jobs. Who really lost?

I suspect they were only paid minimum wage. 15,000 jobs.