There's nothing sweet about Hostess's success for ex-workers

Almost three years ago, just before Thanksgiving, Hostess Brand executives threw their then 18,000 union workers under the bus by blaming them for the need to declare bankruptcy. The move put these Teamsters and other union members out of a job. But now, the company's new venture capitalists owners are borrowing more than $900 million to give their shareholders a slap on the back for a job well done.

Apollo Global Management LLC and Metropoulos & Co. acquired the maker of Twinkies from liquidation in 2013 for $410 million. Since then, freed from the burden of providing fair wages and a pension, the new ownership has flourished. In fact, it turned down an offer to sell the new Hostess for $1.6 billion earlier this year and is still mulling taking the company public instead.

It's all quite a turn of events for a company that saddled its poor business decisions on its workforce and blamed it for its failures even though it repeatedly couldn't reduce its debt during previous bankruptcy efforts. It is emblematic of the current culture where the rich get richer and workers get screwed.

But are the current owners making the same mistake as the previous ones? As Bloomberg stated:

For Hostess, the deal will triple debt levels to about six times a measure of earnings, according to an S&P report this month. Regulators including the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in their 2013 leveraged lending guidance that debt levels exceeding six times raise concern as they seek to curb risky underwriting.

Of course, given that Apollo and Metropoulos are only looking to maximize profits, they probably don't care about these issues. They want the money. It's a real problem in the private sector today -- short-term profit over fiscal longevity and a concern for workers who help put a company in the black.

Hostess's current bosses should be wise to the mistakes of their predecessors. Workers shouldn't be getting the short end of the stick.

Today's Teamster News 10.08.14

Teamster News
Teamsters Warehouse Workers Face a Bankruptcy Court Designed to Protect Bosses, Not Workers  In These Times   ...The Keene, New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers’s actions could prove to be an immediate threat to the livelihoods of about 1,100 Teamster members in the Mid-Atlantic region, the latest in a series of damaging anti-union maneuvers by the company. The action also highlights the growing market power of C&S, a low-profile company that has quietly grown into the nation’s largest warehousing corporation...
Investors, activists press eBay, others to break up with ALEC  Reuters   ...Civic groups such as Common Cause and the Environmental Defense Fund and unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters wrote to the e-commerce company's management asking it to reconsider involvement in ALEC because of what they called its "extreme agenda."...
Trade
TTIP Could Weaken Chemical Rules, Environmental Groups Say  Wall Street Journal   ...environmental groups worry the chemical industry will use these procedures to delay or block new restrictions or bans on chemicals that pose a threat to people or the environment...
TPP Talks Slated For Oct. 25 As Nations Scramble For Deal  law360   ...The Australian government announced Thursday that it will host a meeting of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade ministers this month to tackle outstanding provisions on intellectual property, agricultural market access, state-owned enterprises and other areas as negotiators race to close major parts of the pact by year's end...
State Battles
Walker administration denies complaint seeking to raise minimum wage  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel   ...Gov. Scott Walker's administration has denied a complaint by a labor group seeking to force an increase in Wisconsin's minimum wage...The state law requires that Wisconsin's minimum wage "shall not be less than a living wage."...
Rochester Borough Says No To Police Outsourcing  Insurance News   ...After comments about sacrificing safety for potential savings, officials decided Tuesday to halt a conversation with the township about contracting out police services...
City To Ponder Raise For Contractor Workers  News Journal   ...Wilmington City Council will take action next month on an ordinance that will require employees of city contractors to get paid at least $10.10 an hour...
War On Workers
Freight Train Drivers Report Falling Asleep On The Job  CBC   ...Train operators in Canada’s burgeoning freight rail industry report falling asleep at the controls and coming to work exhausted at an alarmingly high rate, according to an ongoing CBC News investigation into rail safety...
43 Missing Students, a Mass Grave and a Suspect: Mexico’s Police  New York Times   ...they are among 43 students reported missing after deadly clashes with the police on Sept. 26, when at least six student protesters and bystanders were killed in the restive, rural state of Guerrero, one of the poorest in the country and long afflicted by political, social and criminal upheaval...
Las Vegas Schools Groan From Growing Pains  New York Times   ...Schools in this suddenly robust community are so packed these days that 13 of them stay open 12 months a year. Children go to classes and eat lunch in cramped, windowless trailers, bustling with restless students. Thousands more take online classes at home, and school district administrators, desperate for space, are looking to abandoned strip malls for classrooms...
The Great Wage Slowdown Of The 21st Century  New York Times   ...The typical American family makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn’t previously been true since the Great Depression...
American Agriculture's Child Labor Problem  KCET   ...Fourteen hour days with no pay, very little food, routinely beaten and whipped by overseers before being locked away in cramped quarters every night. The fact that U.S. companies were reaping the benefits of this slave labor was outrageous. But what's more disturbing is the fact that child labor exploitation isn't only occurring outside of America. It happens here, too. And it's not entirely illegal...
Construction worker dies on the job  KCCI News   ...Authorities say a construction worker has died after he was pinned under a piece of equipment in northwest Iowa...
Tualatin worker dies after being struck by large metal plates, state agency says  Oregon Live   ...A 27-year-old man hit by large metal plates while working at a Tualatin manufacturing business Monday morning has died, according to the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division...
Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off?  Mother Jones   ...more and more young dentists are taking jobs with chains, many of which set revenue quotas for practitioners. This has created some legal backlash: In 2012, for example, 11 patients sued (PDF) a 450-office chain called Aspen Dental, claiming that its model turns dentists into salespeople...
Microsoft’s Windows 10 has permission to watch your every move  Tech Worm   ...“Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage.”...
Government Set Up A Fake Facebook Page In This Woman’s Name  Buzzfeed   ...A DEA agent commandeered a woman’s identity, created a phony Facebook account in her name, and posted racy photos he found on her seized cell phone. The government said he had the right to do that...

Today's Teamster News 01.05.14

Welcome to the New America: Low-Wage Nation  Common Dreams   ...More and more, Americans are trapped in the uncertainty and injustice that immigrant workers know all too well, whether they’re here on temporary work visas cleaning luxury condos or undocumented and scrambling for daily construction jobs. Increasingly, from an economic standpoint, office parks and store aisles in America are coming to resemble the street corners where day laborers gather and the labor camps where guest workers are trapped...
The Strange Case of American Inequality  Project Syndicate   ...unless something – and it will need to be something major – returns the US to its pre-2008 growth trajectory, future economic historians will not regard the Great Depression as the worst business-cycle disaster of the industrial age. It is we who are living in their worst case...
The Skills Shortage Myth: A Public Relations Tool for Bad Corporate Citizens  Economic Policy Institute   ...the existence of skill shortages ...  exists mostly in the minds of those wanting access to low-wage, indentured servants or public subsidy for the training that firms should be doing themselves...
NSA statement does not deny 'spying' on members of Congress  The Guardian   ...The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it “has spied, or is … currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable...
Bankruptcy Filings Fall 13% in 2013  Credit Slips   ...The monthly decline continues a long-term trend of falling bankruptcy filing rates. Filings are currently running around 3.3 per 1,000 persons...
Manufacturing Growth to Help Propel U.S. Expansion: Economy  Bloomberg   ...Factory purchasing managers said orders were the strongest since April 2010, helping explain why companies such as General Motors Co. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) are taking on more workers in response to rising sales...
Forget Mega-Corporations, Here’s The Mega-Network  TechCrunch   ...Corporations are arguably more powerful today than ever before. But the economy isn’t dominated by a handful of megalithic conglomerates. it consists of hundreds or thousands of smaller, more specialized firms...
The Secrets of White Collar Prisons  DuJour   ...Bernie Kerik, Jack Abramoff and Dennis Kozlowski—three of the most high-profile men to be on the inside—smash the perception that prison life is anything like "Club Fed"...
Brother, Can You Spare $91.44 Billion?  Economic Populist   ...Wall Street got $91.44 billion in bonuses for 2013.  The 98% of us want those bonuses paid back to the victims of the financial crisis...
Outsourcing Pays Big to Private Companies While Americans Suffer  Economic Populist   ...These same contractors obtaining overpriced contracts through privatization pay their workers little.  There are now two contract workers per federal employee and that ratio is getting worse. ... Privatization of government is creating a nation of wage slaves...
An Error Message for the Poor  New York Times   ...students of anti-poverty programs remember a litany of automation and contracting meltdowns — some of them prolonged, even epic. Florida, 1992-93. Michigan, 1998-99. Colorado, 1998-2002. Texas, 2006-7. Indiana, 2007-9. The Colorado Benefits Management System is particularly memorable: When first implemented, it reportedly refused food stamps to anyone who did not have a driver’s license from Guam...
OP-ED: NAFTA’s 20 Years of Unfulfilled Promises  Inter Press Service   ...Under NAFTA, cheap subsidised corn from the United States flooded Mexico, making it impossible for millions of Mexican farmers to compete. Government support previously given to small farmers was withdrawn and directed to big agricultural exporting corporations instead...
Boeing machinists approve contract securing 777X jet  Reuters  ...Boeing's machinists on Friday narrowly approved a crucial labor contract that secured thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity for Washington state but will cost workers their pensions...
Housing tear-downs on the rise as real estate rebounds  Los Angeles Times   ...The rebounding housing market has sparked the demolitions. In November, the median price for a home in Southern California was $385,000, up nearly 20% compared with the same month a year earlier, according to research firm DataQuick...

Today's Teamster News 11.05.13

Cab Drivers Deliver Letter To Gray, Ask For Impoundment Halt  DCist   ...With the Teamsters behind them, a group of D.C. cab drivers gathered outside the Wilson Building to continue their fight against what they see as the problematic rollout of modernization efforts and to get Mayor Vince Gray's attention...
New grocery contract passes by ‘overwhelming majority’  Seattle Times   ...Grocery workers, who are represented by the Teamsters and UFCW in Western Washington, approved a new 3-year contract, ending a month-long series of negotiations that nearly led to a strike...
UPS driver wins praise for working 51 years without a crash  Detroit Free Press   ...UPS driver Tom Camp and his big, brown truck have done something no other UPS driver has accomplished: 51 years without an accident...
“We have the right to educate you”: Workplace indoctrination caught on tape  The Salon   ...In leaked recordings, bosses lecture workers not to unionize, and insist 'This truly is for your best interest'...
Despite Eight Ongoing Criminal/Civil Investigations of JPMorgan, the Bank’s a Law Enforcement Partner With the NYPD  Wall Street on Parade   ...The photo shows an employee of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s number one target for financial fraud investigations, JPMorgan Chase, working inside a high security spy center in Lower Manhattan to — wait for it — help the New York City Police Department catch crooks...
If 'Stop and Frisk' Is Such an Effective Tactic, Why Not Use an Electronic Version on Potentially Corrupt Bank CEOs?  Huffington Post   ...It's estimated that the 2008 financial crisis cost over $6 trillion. In 2009 alone, it's believed that an additional 5,000 people committed suicide due to the financial crisis and resulting unemployment, as the result of malfeasant senior bank officers...
Reich: The American Economy Is Cannibalizing Itself, and We the People Are Going to Pay a Huge Price  AlterNet   ...The bottom 90 percent of Americans have disappeared from official Washington...
One Million K-12 Students Are Homeless  Truthout   ...For many students, when they go to school each morning, they may have no idea where they will be sleeping that night...
Blaming the Poor for Poverty  Truthout   ...Most of the poverty in the U.S. is created from the sort of policies that cut taxes on the wealthy, do away with fiscal and other business regulations, shred the social safety net, and erode middle-class stability – all while singing the praises of self-reliance and individual responsibility...
How We Have Ended Up Paying for 1 Percenters Beach Vacation Homes  The Salon   ...It's time for the wealthy with vacation homes and valuable shoreline land to pay their own way -- and not rely on us...5 Ways Super-Rich Are Betraying America  AlterNet   ...This small group of takers is giving up on the country that made it possible for them to build huge fortunes...
Mexico gun battles leave many dead  The Guardian   ...Thirteen killed in border city of Matamoros as gunmen clash with Mexican armed forces in region ravaged by drug gangs...
Immigration Reform Requires Dismantling NAFTA and Respecting Migrants' Rights  The Real News   ...“When the North American Free Trade Agreement allowed big U.S. grain companies, for instance, to dump cheap, cheap corn on the Mexican market, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers essentially were not able to sell their crops for the cost of growing it,” says Bacon.  “[They] had to leave home in order to survive, and wound up migrating to the north of Mexico, crossing the border, and coming here to the United States.”...
Colombian women on 'crossed legs' sex strike over crumbling highway  Global Post   ...Why, they asked, should they bring any more babies into the world when pregnant women were dying along the highway trying to get to the hospital?...
Bangladesh Garment Workers Get A Raise (But They Still Earn the Lowest Wages In The World) Associated Press ...A government-appointed panel in Bangladesh voted Monday to raise the minimum wage for millions of garment workers to about $66 a month — still the lowest in the world and well below what workers have been seeking...
Kochs’ Group Has Big Ambitions in Small Elections  New York Times   ...Backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity has been involved in local political contests in Kansas, Ohio, Texas and Iowa, but some are skeptical of its motives...
Koch group, unions battle over Colorado schools race  Politico   ...This fall, Americans for Prosperity is also spending big in the wealthy suburbs south of Denver to influence voters in the Douglas County School District, which has gone further than any district in the nation to reshape public education into a competitive, free-market enterprise...
Fewer than 1/4th of Republicans Support Electing More Women to Congress  AlterNet   ...New poll reveals staggering partisan gender divide on women in politics...
Texas' Restrictive Voter ID Law Stops A Former U.S. House Speaker From Getting A Voter ID Card  Huffington Post   ...Former U.S. Speaker of the House Jim Wright (D-Texas) unsuccessfully tried to get a voter identification card at a Texas Department of Public Safety office on Saturday...
As Pennsylvania Prepares to Fail, Other States Are Not Far Behind (opinion)  Talking Points Memo   ...It's hard to imagine that Pennsylvania is preparing to become a failed state, but it is. Despite world-class universities, active industries, and a global economic footprint, the Commonwealth has decided to cut funding for students and place its bets on a growing prison population...
Auto Workers Try a New Angle at Volkswagen  Truthout   ...The United Auto Workers, so long frustrated in their attempts to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S., may have found a different way in...
BART union members approve contract  Progressive Railroading   ...Members of Bay Area Rapid Transit's (BART) two largest unions have ratified four-year contracts that will increase wages, require employee pension contribution, improve safety and allow BART to adopt technology to streamline operations…

Today's Teamster News 08.30.13

Illinois Teamsters endorse Pat Quinn for governor  Teamsters Joint Council 25   ...Teamsters Joint Council 25 endorsed Pat Quinn for a second term as Illinois governor today in a press conference at the Chicago International Produce Market...
Teamsters Approve Contract Extension With DHL’s Air Express International  Transport Topics   ...Teamsters union workers employed by DHL subsidiary Air Express International have approved a one-year contract extension, the union said...
Fast food strikes go super-sized in clash over wages  CNBC   ...From San Diego to New York, workers stopped flipping burgers, frying fries, and slathering on secret sauce in what organizers called the largest strikes against the nation's fast food companies ever...
US Banks Earn Record $42.2B in 2nd Quarter  Associated Press   ...The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says the banking industry earned $42.2 billion in the second quarter, up 23 percent from the second quarter of 2012. About 54 percent of U.S. banks reported improved earnings from a year earlier...
Teen employment hits record lows, suggesting lost generation  McClatchy   ...slightly more than three in 10 teens actually worked a summer job, out of a universe of roughly 16.8 million U.S. teens. “We have never had anything this low in our lives. This is a Great Depression for teens, and no time in history have we encountered anything like that,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston...
San Bernardino, California, eligible for bankruptcy: judge  Reuters   ...The tentative ruling came despite objections by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers. The $260 billion pension fund is the city's biggest creditor...
NSA: fear of a black van  zdnet   ...Most of us are good citizens. And yet. What if the government is listening in, or watching, or scanning, and some algorithm triggers an investigation and some quota-happy g-man decides to make one of us a pet project?...
Poverty saps mental capacity to deal with complex tasks, say scientists  The Guardian   ...Poor people spend so much mental energy on the immediate problems of paying bills and cutting costs that they are left with less capacity to deal with other complex but important tasks, including education, training or managing their time, suggests research published on Thursday...
Why is Sydney University on strike? Because students are not our 'clients' (opinion)  The Guardian   ...The ongoing commodification of higher education is just one facet of the disastrous hijacking of universities by corporate ideology. We are fighting this...
Colombia farmers' strikes spread to cities  3 News   ...Nationwide agricultural strikes are continuing in Colombia after more than a week of ongoing roadblocks, marches and clashes with the police. Protests have grown in size and intensity after the president, Juan Manuel Santos, denied a strike was happening...
No federal challenge to pot legalization in two states  CNN   ...Attorney General Eric Holder, in a conference call Thursday morning, notified the governors of Colorado and Washington that the department, for now, will not seek to pre-empt those states' laws, which followed voters' approval of ballot measures that legalized recreational marijuana use...
Nearly 40% of the Top Paid CEOs Bombed at Their Jobs  Economic Populist   ...Of those 500 who made the Wall Street Journal's top 25 highest paid Chief Executive Officer list, a whopping 38% were utter failures at their jobs...

Today's Teamster News 08.06.13

Teamsters, strikers call on Lake Transit, county leaders to take action  Lake County Record-Bee   ...Teamsters, Paratransit employees and members of the community gathered Friday at noon in front of Lake County’s City Hall to picket, address the media and call on county leaders and Lake Transit to take action on the public transportation issue...
New Hampshire Waste Workers Win Card-Check Recognition to Become Teamsters  IBT   ...Waste workers with Casella Waste Systems in Brentwood, N.H., will now be represented by the Teamsters Union, after Local 633 in Manchester, N.H., secured a card-check agreement. The workers overwhelmingly signed up to become Teamster members...
Gold Cross Strike Continues for EMTs, Paramedics  Imperial Valley Press...Friends, families, and supporters of Teamsters Local 542 picket in front of Gold Cross Ambulance on Sunday afternoon in El Centro. Check out this photo gallery...
U.S. Trustee Objects to AMR Chief's $20 Million Severance, Again  Wall Street Journal   ...Justice Department officials monitoring the American Airlines bankruptcy case again objected to a proposed $20 million severance package for Tom Horton, AMR's current chief executive, according to a court filing made late Friday...
U.S. Issues New Rail Safety Rules After Quebec Disaster  Journal of Commerce   ...The Federal Railroad Administration on Friday issued an emergency order aimed at making the hauling of hazardous materials safer, following last month's deadly Quebec fuel train accident...
Politicians must step up and make rail safety a top priority (opinion)   Rabble   ...Transport Canada's emergency safety directive issued following the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy is welcome but more can be done...
100 homes evacuated in southern Louisiana after train derails  Los Angeles Times   ...About 100 homes remained evacuated on Monday as officials worked to clean up the area around the derailment of a train carrying chemicals near the town of Lawtell, Louisiana. The accident took place Sunday and derailed 27 cars of a Union Pacific train...
40 Percent Of U.S. Workers Make Less Than What A Full-Time Minimum Wage Worker Made In 1968  Men's News Daily   ...Are American workers paid enough? Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour. Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today...
Bernie Sanders: Walmart family’s ‘obscene’ wealth subsidized by taxpayers  Raw Story   ...Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Saturday and scoffed at the idea that major corporations like Walmart can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage and that to raise the U.S. minimum wage would be bad for the economy...
The rich are saving cash at a record pace  CNBC   ...Since the financial crisis, the wealthy have become the nation's top cash hoarders, filling up deposit accounts and money markets at a rapid clip...
Massive Toxic Black Cloud, Brought To You by the Koch Bros, Blows Over Detroit  Common Dreams   ...Mind-boggling video of a billowing, high-carbon, high-sulfur cloud from the mountain of petroleum coke - waste from Canadian tar sands shipped from Alberta to Detroit, and the dirtiest potential energy source ever - illegally stored by the Koch Brothers along the Detroit River...
Eight Ways Privatization Has Failed America (opinion)  Truth-Out   ...Some of America's leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the "free market." They're right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn't seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public...
The Force Behind Bills To Lower Wages and Suppress Workers’ Rights? You Guessed It: ALEC  In These Times   ...As working Americans speak out for higher wages, better benefits and respect in the workplace, a coordinated, nationwide campaign to silence them is mounting—and ALEC is at the heart of it...
Report: State workers need raise to match private sector  Denver Post   ...Colorado's roughly 32,000 state workers need a 3.8 percent raise to catch up to their counterparts in the private sector, the state Department of Personnel and Administration said...
Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon  Washington Post   ...Ultimately, the paper’s financial challenges prompted the company’s board to consider a sale, a step once regarded as unthinkable by insiders and the Graham family...
Indiana senator to push for municipal bankruptcy law  Associated Press   ...A northwestern Indiana lawmaker says he will push a measure next year that would change state law to allow local governments to file for bankruptcy like Detroit did in July...
Judge to open documents in Idaho prison lawsuit  Associated Press   ...A federal judge has ordered that several documents be unsealed in a lawsuit between Idaho inmates and Corrections Corporation of America just days before a hearing is set over whether the private prison company should be held in contempt of court...
Four-day bus strike in suburbs east of Phoenix ends  Associated Press   ...First Transit bus drivers in the Phoenix suburbs tentatively reached an agreement Sunday with a national bus company to end a four-day strike by the drivers that would let bus service resume in time for Monday morning's commute...
BART strike averted as Governor orders inquiry  Associated Press   ...Hundreds of thousands of San Francisco Bay area commuters got at least a temporary reprieve from a massive transit strike today when Gov. Jerry Brown ordered an inquiry into a labor contract dispute...

Utah Teamsters set up food pantry for Hostess Teamsters

The liquidation of Hostess couldn’t come at a worse time for thousands of workers who lost their jobs.

Local 222, which represents about 110 Hostess drivers in Utah, has organized a food pantry to support Hostess Teamsters during this difficult time.

Here’s what they reported on Facebook this weekend:

With the collapse of the American Icon Hostess, over 18,500 working Americans, Teamsters and Bakers both, have been cast out in the cold, just in time for Thanksgiving. Thanks investment bankers, may your holidays be full of self-reflection.

For the rest of us, we now have a group who will be needing some assistance. The Local will be putting together a Food Pantry. We will post longer lists of things needed as we are made aware.

Please feel free to swing by and drop off donations starting Monday. We will be looking for the normal types of goods:

Diapers of all sizes
Formula
Toilet paper
Feminine products
Canned foods: veggies, soups, meats, sauces
Boxed foods: soups, breads, instant dishes
Pasta
Uncooked Rice
Nonperishable food stuffs 

Let's pull together, Brothers and Sisters, and circle our wagons. This is what keeps us strong.

Rusty Hart, secretary-treasurer of Local 222, tells us the local already received a $2,500 contribution since posting the announcement:

We’re also going to put in about $2,500 worth of supplies from the local, so we have about $5,000 in total so far.

Brother Hart says standing up for each other in tough times is what the Teamsters are all about:

We wanted to set this up so that Teamsters can get the support they need from their brothers and sisters and the community. With the holiday season here, our members definitely need all the help they can get during this rough time

This morning, the local announced on Facebook that Mololo Gardens, a local business in downtown Salt Lake City, is donating 10 percent of its sales to the food pantry between now and Christmas Eve.

Hostess executives who plundered the Twinkies-maker and drove it into the ground won’t worry about putting food on the table. Even as they blamed union workers for the company's demise, 19 of them are asking the bankruptcy court to let them give themselves $1.75 million in bonuses after putting 18,500 people out of work. Nice holiday spirit.

Thankfully, Teamsters look out for one another. We hope others will give generously and lend a helping hand to Hostess Teamsters around the county.

Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

Airline bosses: Loose screws and outsourcing

Last weekend an American Airlines plane flying from Boston to Miami made an emergency landing in New York because…well, because of outsourcing. A row of passenger seats became unbolted midflight, causing the loose seats to “slid[e] around like a carnival ride.”

And if that’s not scary enough, it happened again on Monday on another Miami-bound American Airlines flight. Pretty soon passengers might start asking why they need to fasten their seatbelts if the seats aren’t fastened to the floor!

According to American Airlines pilot Tom Hoban,

We’ve had two diverts and a series of write-ups about the same problem with 757s. They used to go to American maintenance facilities in Fort Worth and Tulsa but now they go to an outside vendor; our guys tell us the work is pretty shoddy.

The maintenance for both planes is done by TIMCO, a company with a knack for substandard work:

Indeed, American’s 757 maintenance is being outsourced. And the work is, by all accounts, pretty shoddy. According to one AA insider, the same shoddy workmanship that caused a row of seats to “slid[e] around like a carnival ride” is also going into the most critical parts of the aircraft.

American Airlines workers are facing hard times because the airline declared bankruptcy and management is trying to extract concessions from its mechanics, pilots and flight attendants. Last month, American sent layoff notices to thousands of workers, including over 1,000 mechanics.

So who’s gonna fix the planes? American wants to outsource 35 percent of its maintenance work to foreign and domestic contractors – you know, reliable, non-union (and sometimes unlicensed) contractors like TIMCO.

Of course, American isn’t alone. AA pilot Hoban explains:

This is not just American, it’s industry-wide. The biggest heavy maintenance facilities are in El Salvador and China and there’s essentially no real daily oversight there. You don’t have A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) certified mechanics, there’s a lack of quality assurance programs, and you’re at the mercy of how that particular facility is run, and you really have no idea as to what kind of maintenance actually occurred. The only time you have any actual visual assessment is when you have an in-flight emergency.

American Airlines mechanics are currently trying to switch unions and become Teamsters. The Teamsters have a strong record of fighting back against airline maintenance outsourcing at other airlines like United.

Airline bosses are sacrificing safety and jobs in the name of saving a few bucks. And as author William McGee documents in his new book Attention All Passengers, maintenance outsourcing is worsening the airline industry's tailspin.

-- Union Thug

Today's Teamster News 05.12.12

Extended jobless benefits cut in eight states  Washington Post   ... about 400,000 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have been cut off of the federal government’s extended unemployment benefits program this year, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the unemployed...
S.E.C. Opens Investigation Into JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss  New York Times   ...Regulators are investigating potential civil violations surrounding the $2 billion loss that JPMorgan Chase disclosed on Thursday, raising further questions about trading activities at the nation’s biggest bank...
Unfairness to homeowners blocks recovery (opinion)  Marketwatch   ...Our legal system permits every kind of property owner to reduce their mortgages, with one exception; homeowners are given no way to reduce excess mortgages...
Seniors' Social Security Garnished for Student Debts  Truthout   ...two million US seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default...
Why the Walker Video Disclosure Has Staying Power  The Political Environment   ...The video will resonate with even more oomph and permanency than will the prank call taped with Walker by a blogger a year ago...
Council to revisit Teamsters issue  Pekin Daily Times   ... city officials continue to say there is no tentative agreement with the Teamsters Local 627...

Whoa! Twinkie-maker execs gave themselves huge pay hikes before bankruptcy

Hostess executives allegedly looted the company while demanding "shared sacrifice" by workers, according to the Dow Jones news service. Dow Jones got hold of a legal document that contained the explosive allegations by the company's unsecured creditors committee.

According to Dow Jones,

Unsecured creditors suspect that Hostess Brands Inc. may have "manipulated" its executives' pay--sending its former chief executive's salary, in particular, skyrocketing- in the months leading up to its Chapter 11 filing, in an effort to dodge the Bankruptcy Code's compensation requirements, according to a redacted court filing reviewed by Dow Jones.

The official committee representing Hostess's unsecured creditors wants to launch a formal investigation in the bankruptcy case, hoping to dig deeper into the bakery company's senior executive compensation. The information the group has already gathered suggests "the possibility" that the company converted a chunk of its top executives' pay from performance-based bonuses to guaranteed salary, "at least in part to sidestep" rules designed to ensure that companies in bankruptcy aren't enticing their employees to stay on board with the promise of cash.

The Teamsters' response was fast and furious. According to the press release,

The Teamsters Union expressed outrage today over revelations uncovered by Dow Jones Newswires that Hostess Brands Inc. executives cheated the company and lined their own pockets while at the same time demanding drastic wage and benefit cuts by workers and failing to pay pension obligations during the run-up to bankruptcy.

“The Dow Jones article suggests that management broke the law, looted the company and then told workers to suck it up and sacrifice,” said Ken Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters Union, which represents more than 7,500 route sales representatives, drivers and other employees at Hostess.

“If this is true, Hostess executives have violated their agreement with the Teamsters that all parties, including management, would share equally in concessions that would help keep this company alive,” Hall said.

“It would be outrageous for the board of directors, which included secured lenders, to approve executive salary increases of up to 300 percent for a company that has filed for bankruptcy twice in four years,” he said.

The committee representing the company’s unsecured creditors, which includes the Teamsters Union, is calling for a formal investigation into Hostess management’s potential violation of bankruptcy law.

Funny, we had just been commenting that executive pay destroys companies and kills the economy.