Friday, November 16, 2012

"He's holding out for a management position." (Christmas Vacation)

The Twinkie is dead. Long live the Twinkie.

Not really. I'm sure Keebler or Kraft will pick up the "never-gonna-expire-survival-food" shortly, ensuring that future generations will be exposed to that culinary "delight."

Apparently Hostess was mismanaged (shocking!) over the past decade with poor financial and operational decisions- at least according to the alphabet union president. The union contract was at the crux of the matter. While I'm not part of the union, nor Hostess employee, I can't speak to the details of why these two parties couldn't agree to work.

We are in a wildly different employee market. It reflects the global market. Cost is king. Rather, it's the lowering of costs to maintain profit margins- that's king. Hostess kept itself in America, if you noticed. Twinkies last practically forever, so there's no reason why Hostess couldn't ship the production to a low-cost center country. The products weigh next to nothing, so freight wouldn't be an issue.

It's a lose-lose situation now.

On a different note, I'm reminded of the recent news about CEO pay and golden parachutes or termination "bonuses" for CEOs that have run the companies to the ground. The defense to this compensation is that companies have to pay a lot of incentives to attract the top talent. Guess what? If a CEO burns a company in 3 years or 5 years, obviously they are not top talent- hence they don't deserve the compensation package offered to them. Incentives are for doing good, not bad.

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