Dukasaur wrote:patches70 wrote:The mediation has failed, the liquidation is back on.
Gumbo Bimbo has reportedly been denied the ability to purchase Hostess because of anti-trust laws. That means that the most likely buyer will be a PE firm and PE firm's don't like unions. Thus, the chances of Hostess being purchased and the Union being included has dropped dramatically.
Related, workers are beginning to turn on the Union because the union characterized it to the workers that a buyer would swoop in and purchase the company. Thereby preserving the company and the union. Grim reality is now setting in as the union workers are watching their play go south fast.
There is one other possible ending to this, and considering our politicians it's not too far fetched.
A bailout. The US government hijacking the bankruptcy process so they can preserve the 18K votes by screwing over the company's creditors.
It's happened before......
We can hope, since it will be a while until another election, that we will be spared the nauseating sight of another taxpayer bailout, and the cadaver will be allowed to Rot In Peace.
Yes, we can only hope.
For what it's worth, if my employers one day turned around and said they'd have to cut my pay then I'd just quit. I wouldn't put up with that for a second. A deal is a deal after all.
Hap Smo 10 wrote:That would be true irony, right?: the O'blabla admin/left clamping down on junkfood and "promoting public health" while bailing out the twinkie mine at the same time?
Yes, ironic. Hypocrisy comes to mind as well.
As you all may or may not know, when a company goes into such a process the US Justice Department appoints a trustee. In the case of Hostess this trustee is one Tracy Hope Davis. Davis asked the judge to change Hostesses Chapter 11 to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Under chapter 11 it is the creditors who act as the trustee. Under chapter 7 it is the government appointed trustee who supervises the wind down.
The Justice trustee is standard in all bankruptcies. But in a chapter 11 the trustee simply checks all the books and makes sure nothing criminal is going on.
Under a chapter 7 it will be the government who decides who gets what, much to the chagrin of the creditors. I haven't heard how this went down with the judge yet. But if it goes that route then you could see effectively a stealth nationalization of Hostess.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-1 ... idate.htmlA lot of this is just standard procedure and the company will likely just be liquidated, but considering the government track record, stranger things have happened.....