 |
| Hostess won't invest in their future. |
Hostess management -- you know, the people who want to yank as much money as they can out of the company for themselves before they kick the workers to the curb -- sent layoff warnings to employees on Friday.
The Teamsters are not amused. A stinging reply was drafted by Ken Hall, general-secretary treasurer, and Dave Dudas, director of the Bakery and Laundry Conference. They said the Teamsters are,
“ready, willing and able to negotiate” consensual labor changes but vowed not to “let the company force a poorly defined or inequitable turnaround plan on its employees that, despite our concessions, is destined to put Hostess out of business once and for all.”They pointed out that management wants to continue to underinvest in the company -- the same failed policy that caused the trouble in the first place:
First of all, Mr. Rayburn’s April 16th letter claimed the Company’s “Turnaround Plan” would allow Hostess to “invest in our future with new technologies, updated facilities, robust marketing and advertising and R&D.” That’s just wrong: the Company’s Turnaround Plan calls for investing 0.2% of sales in R&D, whereas the target for Hostess’ best competitors is around 1.5% – over 7 times more investment in R&D. The Turnaround Plan would also continue historical underspending on capital expenditures.They go on to take apart the company's lies about their problems. You can read the whole thing here.
Now just because workers got WARN notices doesn't mean they'll be laid off. Reports the Wall Street Journal:
The federal WARN Act requires companies to give employees 60 days notice before closing a facility or ordering mass layoffs. However, sending the notices doesn’t mean a company is definitely going to lay off the recipients.
“The conditional WARN notices were sent to alert employees that a sale or wind down of the company is possible in the future. There are no immediate actions being taken,” spokeswoman Anita-Marie Laurie said Monday in an emailed statement.Meanwhile, they have a long way to go to prove this to us:
“Our goal is to emerge from bankruptcy as a growing company with a strong future—one that continues to provide good jobs with competitive wages and benefits.”
