Executive Greed At Hostess

The other day I wrote a post about the Hostess Company going into bankruptcy. That company is trying to blame all of its troubles on the union of its workers. The truth is that those workers, through their union, gave back over $110 million in pay and benefits to the company in an effort to make the company viable and help insure its future. Did the executives give up any pay or benefits? I doubt it.

This company is not going down because of its employee union. It is going down because of greed -- both by company executives and the equity firm and hedge funds that now control the company. These firms borrowed huge amounts using the company as collateral to pad their own pockets. They won't lose any money, even if the company does go out of business.

And the executives are doing very well also. While none of the pay or benefits that workers gave up were ever restored (in fact, the company wants them to give up even more), the executives were given millions of dollars in raises. That happened right before they once again declared bankruptcy. Now the company is asking the bankruptcy judge to allow them to give $1.75 million in bonuses to those same executives.

Does that make even the least bit of sense? Do the same executives that allowed Wall Street to greedily rape the company, and then drove it into bankruptcy deserve bonuses (or raises)? I would think executives that did that bad a job would deserve to be fired, not given raises and bonuses.

I am starting to wonder if this whole "going out of business" thing is just a sham -- an effort to break the union and then pay employees a poverty wage, while the equity and hedge firms get even richer and the executives get rewarded for forcing the company's workers into the poorhouse. Why would you give executives raises and bonuses if the company is going out of business? Is it to keep them from going to other companies, because the company really plans to reorganize and continue with minimum wage workers?

This whole thing is beginning to have the stench of lies and greed. Unlike many of my brothers and sisters on the left (who denigrated the un-wholesomeness of Hostess products), I actually liked this company's products. But after the things I've learned about the company's naked greed, and the way they have no respect for their workers, even if they do survive I'll never eat another twinkie, ho-ho, cupcake, etc.