Hostess Execs To Get Bonuses While Their Company Implodes

As if we needed further proof that a substantial part of corporate America has its head up its butt, Yahoo! News reports that Hostess is going to give its senior execs huge bonuses even while they're sinking into the quicksand of bankruptcy:

Quote :

A federal bankruptcy judge has approved bonuses for executives of Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, who stay on as the company is broken up and sold off.

On Thursday, as part of a plan to liquidate the company and lay off 18,000 workers, a federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., approved paying 19 Hostess executives bonuses totaling $1.8 million. Hostess has said it has interest from at least 110 firms who want to buy pieces of the operation.

The decision comes as the company, known for its iconic snack cakes like Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, says it doesn't have enough cash on hand to pay retirement benefits to some former employees.

The bonuses do not include pay for CEO Gregory Rayburn, who was brought on as a restructuring expert earlier this year, according to The Associated Press. Rayburn is being paid $125,000 a month.

Former employees are outraged over the bonuses handed out to high ups.

One has to wonder what the judge was smoking when he signed off on the bonus decision.

Quote :

A federal bankruptcy judge has approved bonuses for executives of Hostess

This what makes America the greatest country in the world.

Of course, the union gets the blame for the company's demise. Doncha know, all those greedy union employees expected to be paid fairly and work under safe conditions--how selfish of them! If they'd done that then...then the company might have gone bankrupt! But as we can see, it didn't...oh, wait.

The executives are a bunch of incompetents and shouldn't get a penny.

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I hate to interrupt the anti-capitalist butthurt with math, but I feel it may lend some perspective to the three board members who lack it the most.

First, 19 people getting $1.8 million really isn't a fuckton of money, as far as compensation for executives go. It's less than $100,000 per man.

Some Assclown wrote:

But Mikey, handsome and fair Mikey, the workers have more need for $100,000 dollars!

Yes, I am handsome. However, $1.8 million spread out over the 18,000 laid off employees is $100 a person. Enjoy filling up your car one and a half times.

Hostess is dead. The unions killed it. The particulars of minor details won't change that macro picture.

yeah the execs really deserved the bonuses, what with them driving the company into the ground and all

that is the kind of work ethic and can-do that deserves a bonus

this thread has reminded me that next year's budget will be announced soon which means the greedy thieving government is going to take more of my hard-earned money

i don't mind paying taxes but i expect them to be spent on useful shit like schools and hospitals not to shore up zombie banks and pay for tds to spend 3/4 of the year at home in their constituencies doing favours for fellas so they'll get re-elected

everyone else in the public sector has to work harder better faster stronger to save €4.3bn and still the dail only sits for 90 days a year, lazy fucking bastards

the robbing bank is hiking up my mortgage again this month and then they have the nerve to call me saying HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT OUR NEW DEPOSIT ACCOUNT YOU CAN SET UP A STANDING ORDER TO PUT THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY IN IT EVERY MONTH hahaha you goddamn assholes think i have money no scratch that you know exactly how much money i have and you want it all you avaricious little shits go to hell

It was not the union's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy.
It was not the worker's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy either.
It was not the government's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy either, and even typing that sentence, although as a negation, gives me the shivers.
It was the management's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy.

Christ, it's hard to think of something easier than selling corn syrup-sweetened saturated fats to the Americans...

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Hostess is dead. The unions killed it. The particulars of minor details won't change that macro picture.

The union did not kill Hostess. The incompetent executives did. Besides, if the cost of labor had really been the problem, then Hostess would have simply moved operations offshore so they could exploit desperate people in impoverished countries.

The Unoriginal wrote:

It was not the union's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy.
It was not the worker's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy either.
It was not the government's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy either, and even typing that sentence, although as a negation, gives me the shivers.
It was the management's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy.

Not when the management was put in place by a Wall Street private equity firm (like Bain Capital) which has an M.O. that amounts to: force the company to sign up to a morgage with you, put poison in their breakfast coffee, and rifle through their pockets as they lay dying.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, $1.8 million spread out over the 18,000 laid off employees is $100 a person. Enjoy filling up your car one and a half times.

Woah, what kind of car do you drive that would cost about $67 a tank?

theweirdkind wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, $1.8 million spread out over the 18,000 laid off employees is $100 a person. Enjoy filling up your car one and a half times.

Woah, what kind of car do you drive that would cost about $67 a tank?

There was some rounding involved. My car has an 18 gallon tank. At $3.40 per gallon (I blame Obama, naturally), it's $61.4 to fill it up completely.

And I'm usually too busy running from one dippy activity to another to fill up my tank before the point where I'm running on fumes.

Oh Noes! The Printout Man has wrecked the company! He wanted all the money do he could buy all the Hoestess cakes himself! IT'S HAPPENED! AND THIS TIME SPIDERMAN ISN'T THERE TO STOP HIM!

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Yeah... I've got nothing to add to this except a whole bunch of these:

I mean, Hostess Factories had fucking Iron Man looking after them!

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I guess that's why so many closed - every time Tony turns round, another factory is being attacked!

Mind you, some of Hostess' protectors wern't as good as others... Take Green Lantern here:

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Who runs into battle with a giant monster with barely a single bar left on his ring's battery. Thankfully in this case a couple of kids with a lunchbox are on hand to save his ass and keep the monster busy while Hal creeps out and hopes no one noticed him.

But who'd have thought that the greedy temptations of pure capitalism could be both the downfall of the company today, as well as a way to protect it in the past, as exemplified by Captain America Himself...

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That's it, Cap, use the evildooers own greed against them and tempt them into betraying each other for the price of a few cupcakes.

*sniff* It's just so patriotic.

I expected at least one screencap from Zombieland with an, at most, half-funny caption.

For shame, WGW.

Knorg wrote:

I expected at least one screencap from Zombieland with an, at most, half-funny caption.

For shame, WGW.

...No.

theweirdkind wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, $1.8 million spread out over the 18,000 laid off employees is $100 a person. Enjoy filling up your car one and a half times.

Woah, what kind of car do you drive that would cost about $67 a tank?

The most American fucking car he could find.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

theweirdkind wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

However, $1.8 million spread out over the 18,000 laid off employees is $100 a person. Enjoy filling up your car one and a half times.

Woah, what kind of car do you drive that would cost about $67 a tank?

The most American fucking car he could find.

You greatly underestimate this great nation.

rachel wrote:

The Unoriginal wrote:

It was the management's job to save Hostess from bankruptcy.

Not when the management was put in place by a Wall Street private equity firm (like Bain Capital) which has an M.O. that amounts to: force the company to sign up to a morgage with you, put poison in their breakfast coffee, and rifle through their pockets as they lay dying.

I wrote "Hostess" but I was arguing in general. Even Alitalia wasn't ultimately killed by "unions" - and it did have its fair share of parasites - but by politicians interfering because it is the flag carrier etc.

One thing I don't understand is why on Earth are the retirement funds kept/managed by the company itself? This way, when the company folds, you're both out of a steady income and a lump sum which may help you keep your body and soul together as you look for another job.

Hopefully the workers will manage to be hired again by whoever buys the facilities.

This is why America needs to become a socialist country. Who cares if it's only $100k per exec, Mikey? THEY SHOULDN'T BE GETTING ANYTHING AT ALL BECAUSE THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COMPANY'S DEMISE. If a puppy chews up an important object, you don't give it a treat, you smack it with a newspaper and tell it no!

xerrofoot wrote:

This is why America needs to become a socialist country. Who cares if it's only $100k per exec, Mikey? THEY SHOULDN'T BE GETTING ANYTHING AT ALL BECAUSE THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COMPANY'S DEMISE. If a puppy chews up an important object, you don't give it a treat, you smack it with a newspaper and tell it no!

These executives aren't necessarily the ones that provided over the signing of the burdensome contracts with the unions that proved to be the downfall of the company. They were most likely people brought in afterwards to try to remedy the situations. They did what they could, but effort proved futile because, when it came down to the necessity of the unions negotiating contracts that weren't poison, the unions' responses were basically to plug their ears and go "LALALALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING!"

Furthermore, the employees certainly don't deserve it. They've been overpaid for years. If they were actually worth their paychecks and the cost of their benefits, they'd have been productive enough that the company wouldn't have gone under. The market value of the employees' services was less than the cost of the employees' services, therefore the company went under.

Overpaid? OVERPAID? You know what, Mikey? I was paid roughly the same amount as the minimum adult wage for the state of Virginia - when I was 16, flipping burgers at McDonald's. Workers in the USA are NOT overpaid. If anything, the vast majority of them are chronically underpaid, that's why many of them are struggling to make ends meet even with multiple jobs.

Kindly remove your head from your ass.

Minimum wage has fuck-all to do with this.

Hostesses get paid minimum wage too.

For once, I actually agree with xerrofoot.

Lady Anne wrote:

For once, I actually agree with xerrofoot.

Yeah, Mikey, stop putting me in this position. It's awkward.