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Hostess Saves Twinkies By Automating, Fires 94% Of Their Workforce (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Where Twinkie once employed 22,000 workers in more than 40 bakeries, their workforce is now down to just 1,170, reports the Washington Post, relying mostly on robotic arms and other forms of automation. "This 500-person plant produces more than 1 million Twinkies a day, 400 million a year. That's 80% of Hostess' total output -- output that under the old regime required 14 plants and 9,000 employees."
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
As if the taste was any better before.
You do realise that the computer you're using is mostly made via automated processes, don't you? Are you going to boycott that as well?
If you're going to boycott everything that's made by a machine you're going to find yourself living in a cave and reverting to a hunter scavenger state.
Automation poses a lot of challenges for our society, but employing people just to give them something to do is not the answer. Personally I think we should reduce the standard working week by one hour per year until we reach a 20 hour standard week. That would allow society to adapt to the changes progressively over the period of a couple of decades while ensuring there are enough jobs for those who have been left unemployed due to automation.
What's passed along is the cost of supporting the thousands of unemployed.
The old company went belly up, so those jobs were gone anyway. This is a new company and new hires, so nobody is "passing along" anything.
Even if that weren't the case and this had been accomplished by restructuring the old company, that's still good. Productivity gains are achieved by getting the same or more output using fewer resources.
I don't get this attitude that Unions destroy everything, was management sitting on their hands. Looking into shenanigans of management.
The raises management gave themselves right before the bankruptcy
Brian Driscoll, CEO, around $750,000 to $2,550,000
Gary Wandschneider, EVP, $500,000 to $900,000
John Stewart, EVP, $400,000 to $700,000
David Loeser, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Kent Magill, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Richard Seban, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
John Akeson, SVP, $300,000 to $480,000
Steven Birgfeld, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Martha Ross, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Rob Kissick, SVP, $182,000 to $273,008
Let's assume you could cut 20 million out of executive salaries. Divide that by the 22,000 employees, and you end up with about $900 a piece. Realistically, you wouldn't be able to take that much from the executives. When the employees outnumber the executive by 10,000 to 1, it really doesn't matter how much you cut off executive pay, because the cost of the labour will vastly outweigh the cost of executive salaries.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned.
Of course not. Productivity gains don't stay concentrated in one company, they are spread through society. Overall, American productivity has improved by a factor of 20 since the late 1800s. So has the average worker seen their standard of living improved by that much? Yes, mostly they have. Improvements in productivity not only improve living standards, they are the ONLY thing that improves living standards.
If you really feel otherwise, then you can go live in a country that has not seen productivity improvements. Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, and Afghanistan are good choices. None of those have greedy rich people suppressing the workers by investing in capital to make them more productive.
When Obama took office, 66+% of the US population worked.
Now, almost 8 years later, 62+% of the US population has a job.
So it is Obama's fault that the baby boomers are retiring?
So it's society's responsibility when it's a matter of deference to business friendliness, but it's the fault of individual when they can't second-guess the desires of employers?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Less than that, even. You forgot the 7+% for employer's part of FICA and Medicare. You forgot whatever unemployment insurance costs in the states of operation. You forgot whatever the employer's portion of various health insurance or other benefits. Taking the general rule of thumb that employer costs are 1.25 to 1.5 times the salary, That $6.3M is only 120 to 144 jobs at $35k- so significantly fewer than your estimate even.
I think most of the complaints about executive salaries aren't really because that money could be used to pay employees more or pay more employees, because those numbers don't really add up; I think the complaint is more just in order of magnitude - 10 times might be palatable, but someone making 100 times the salary of another means that person earns effectively an entire lifetime of the lower salary in a single year.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You left out the third option.
1,100 jobs where saved by automation. Hostess went out of business and several other companies bought up the rights to the products that Hostess made.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You can't say that for certain. Running machines requires skilled labor to maintain and program them. Pulling trays out of an oven all day doesn't. Programming and maintenance skills have a higher value, not to mention that the employee generates more revenue per hour than the manual laborer.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
True, but there's a bit more to the story.
What drove Hostess into the bankruptcy in the first place was bad management, lack of investment into their plants, etc., you know the usual. That management squeezed what they could out of the company, took their bonuses, and left the sinking ship.
They then brought in a new CEO, and he put out plan to right the ship. That included pay freezes/cuts. Two of the unions agreed to the new contract, and one of them double-checked the numbers, and they agreed management was not lying about this being needed.
One union refused. The union leaders recommend to their members to let the company go bankrupt, go to auction, and then the new owners would give them a better contract. Now, it should have been obvious that the new owners are likely going to be company in the same business, and like any merger, a ton of jobs would be lost. Indeed, that was the first thing that happened, where 2/3 of the plants were closed. These were well-paying jobs too, not something you can find baking just anywhere.
In conclusion, irresponsible management drove Hostress to the brink, and that one stupid union put the final nail in the coffin.
It sucks to be in the path of progress; that's why we have welfare. Unemployment is transitional, and it sucks to lose your job and wonder if you're going to spend 5 months or 5 years trying to find a new one; at the same time, unemployment tends to stay in the 4%-8% range, and 5% unemployment means either you or someone else is that guy wondering about where you're getting your next paycheck.
The difference is whether you stay in your comfortable seat and we all stay as poor as we are, or you get moved out of your comfortable seat and the other 95% of society enjoys growing wealth. The middle-class get to buy more toys (e.g. computers, cell phones, the things that made your programming job worth $144k/year in the first place); the poor get to eat more frequently, and maybe get access to medical care; you get to look for a new job, and a highly-wealthy society can supply better welfare to keep you from ending up as a beggar on the street with no job and no food while you do that. Probably less-good for you than not losing your job, but a lot better for everyone else at that moment, and better for *everyone* over time.
You would be wearing a loincloth and hunting in the wilderness right now, probably ill, with no healthcare and the constant uncertainty of where your next meal is coming from, if we didn't progress in this way. Your comfortable life today is built on the cycle of technical unemployment.
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