Yup, unions are awesome!

[babe]

The working conditions in China and the expectations and desires of the common Chinese workers are changing, as the expectations and desires of early industrial age workers in the U.S. have changed. China is emerging from a long dark age. The emergence is at the same time threatening and encouraging. The most populace nation on planet Earth, filled with more human life than three nations such as the U.S.. I wish them well. It's a hard journey, but well worth the trip.

I agree, from my relative ignorance, that the best hope we have is the ability of the ordinary Chinese people to improve their lives in a peaceful way within their present circumstances. . . . and that there seems to be good reason to hope for this . . . . and I wish them well, too.

According to my sister-in-law, whose father served in the Chinese Navy and whose mother has quietly and almost inconspicuously lived as a Christian through her whole life, life is getting better and particularly for the fairly strong "capitalist" business manager class, who are arguably responsible for the resurgence of American auto company fortunes. . . . . In mainland China, every advancing family "must have" their own Buick.

But there are still a whole lot of Chinese workers who are dying from the cadmium in the paint they use on toys for export. . . . .and in many other specific hazardous working situations.

And the air we breathe is being impacted from our downwind position on the globe.

[One Brow]

food is routinely shipped internationally. . . . everything from staples like grain to bananas.

Yes, not all food is baked goods. Grains don't ripen much off the stalk. Fruit is pickedand shipped before it is ripe. What does any of this have to do with baked goods?

Tariffs carry their own load of negative effects, but I'll let the economists talk aboiut those, if they are so inclined.

[babe]

Yes, not all food is baked goods. Grains don't ripen much off the stalk. Fruit is pickedand shipped before it is ripe. What does any of this have to do with baked goods?

Tariffs carry their own load of negative effects, but I'll let the economists talk aboiut those, if they are so inclined.

The Hostess products are very long "shelf life", with pretty high value/weight at the checkstand, and being "baked goods" is irrelevant to the economics of producing them anywhere on the planet. What is relevant is the cost of labor, and as is the case in many other specific products, the removal of tariffs facilitates relocating production offshore/outside this country. . . . . and is the principal economic fact that has meant American soil union jobs have been lost.

Yet our unions have supported the legislation on tariff reductions, and cost American union members their jobs.

The disproportionate costs of American Labor vs. Maquiladoras shops in Juarez were obvious from the eighties, and only one area of US legislation enabling "globalization" in trade. Other disadvantages we have engineered to our own destruction of our American middle class workers include disproportionate costs such as environmental regulations we impose on ourselves, and "safety net" social costs such as social security, medicare, Obamacare, and a thousand other things we have done to shoot ourselves in the foot, so to speak, as a nation. . . . . even importing virtual "slave labor" workers from poor countries for our farms, food processors, meatpackers, and virtually every other labor-intensive production facility you could name.

We import engineers, medical caregivers, even business "managers" such as hotel/motel nightclerks, auto mechanics, home builders and all kinds of construction workers. . . . all at the expense of what used to be "Union" jobs in large numbers. . . . and our unions have been on the bandwagon every step of the way.

Unions today don't give a damn about maintaining adequate living wages or the welfare of their workers. The managers of Unions are just as happy to collect dues from slave laborers as anyone else. All they care about is their piece of the pie.

Which, logically, brings us back to the Hostess bakers' union that tried to, or pretended to, negotiate a stronger pay package. . . . and the corporate managers who all Romney-esque just knew they had a brand and product that could be produced anywhere but didn't care to do it here anymore, who believed they could sell the brand at a nice price even with their declining business in the USA, and probably to some "robber baron" cartelists located across the Rio Grande, who would use our new Brownsville-Chicago superhighway and Mexican trucking to deliver to the US market. . . . and maybe set up a bakery in Shanghai too. So it's really no big deal to us if a few of our capitalists sell off a piece of our economy, pocketing huge bonus/incentives amounting to many times the hoped-for wage/benefits of twenty thousand Americans supposedly because of "union" stupidity or intransigence.

It's really more of a "what took them so long to do this" story.

Even for "baked goods".

[One Brow]

The Hostess products are very long "shelf life", ...

I don't think so. Less than a week, in most cases.

[Gameface]

I don't think so. Less than a week, in most cases.

Officially the shelf-life is 25 days.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/twinkies.asp

[One Brow]

Officially the shelf-life is 25 days.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/twinkies.asp

I didn't think it would be that long, but there's a reason I'll use "most" in discussions like this.

[babe]

I've found twinkies in the cupboard that had been there a year, and snarfed them up without noticing any change in smell, flavor, or digestibility. . . . and I used to frequent a Hostess bakery about a block away where they sold stuff pretty cheap with the magic marker streak. . . . at half price or better. . . . . presumably because of the claimed 25 day shelf life. . . . and I've serviced refreshment stands which offer them for sale. . . . and while they do sell, sometimes they are there a while, and nobody ever complained about them being outta date.

Clearly, the urban legends seem believable because of a whole lot of people with observations like this. . . . lol.

how about marshmallows. . . and mayonaise. . . . related egg products with long shelf lives. . . . and it's the egg ingredient that has the shortest shelf life in the twinkie. The stamped expiration date probably reflects not the actual shelf life but the market research and sales "shelf life". . . . no reason to extend the date on impulse purchase/highly consumable comfort foods. . . . unless you really just can't sell them that fast. . . . which i don't think is the dominant issue.

clearly, I favor highly distributed production models anyway, where the stuff we buy is more locally-produced than shipped back and forth across the oceans. Seems like if we cared about energy waste we could put a little more value on goods being produced near their retail outlets. . . .

[Red Jazz Fan]

Obviously they decided it wasn't worth it. It isn't like they're making out at your expense, they're all losing their jobs, too. I'm sorry this is happening to you, but they didn't owe you anything.

I didn't once say they owed me a ****ing thing. Like I said, there's plenty of blame for both sides but you can't replace Union workers, as Salty suggested, without closing down the company for a minimum of 30 days. So, the strike was the ultimate doom. AND, yes, managment was too eager for it to happen.

[SaltyDawg]

I didn't once say they owed me a ****ing thing. Like I said, there's plenty of blame for both sides but you can't replace Union workers, as Salty suggested, without closing down the company for a minimum of 30 days. So, the strike was the ultimate doom. AND, yes, managment was too eager for it to happen.

That's BS. Union workers can absolutely be replaced if they go on strike. I don't know who is telling you the incorrect info, but you need to check a different source.

Here is some reading to get you started:
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.or...newsroom_day7/

Some more info on permanently replacing striking workers:
http://leraweb.org/publications/pers...een-union-atto

Here is a company that provides replacement workers to companies during strikes and lockouts:
http://www.pmgroup1.com/planning-ser...spute-planning

Striking workers absolutely can be replaced, either permanently or temporarily. It's happened plenty of times in the past, even with highly skilled workers. Whoever is telling you that it can't be done is likely a huge part of the problem at hostess. Especially if these guys are as unskilled as you claim.