Justin's Political Corner
First New York, then central Pennsylvania, and then Chicago. Now St. Louis is the latest American city to be hit with a strike by non-union fast food workers demanding higher wages and the right to form a union. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, over 100 employees at approximately 30 different St. Louis-based restaurants walked off the job, demanding the right to form a union and a raise from Missouri’s $7.35 hourly minimum wage to $15 per hour. The strike was organized by an alternative workers’ group called the St. Louis Organizing Committee as part of a campaign called STL Can’t Survive on $7.35.
“Increasingly, fast food jobs are the only options for St. Louisans, but these workers can’t even afford to pay for rent, food, or carfare,” said Rev. Martin Rafanan, director of STL Can’t Survive on $7.35, in a statement. “If the workers earned more, fast food workers would spend that money at local businesses here in St. Louis and help lift our economy.”
The strike—which hit restaurants such as McDonald’s, Jimmy John’s, Wendy’s and Domino’s—was only a quarter a size of New York’s second fast food strike, still the largest walkout to occur in the industry. Still, the recent events in St. Louis indicate that labor unrest within the industry is not going away, and that the nationwide momentum shows no sign of abating.
A significant chunk of the jobs being gained during America’s economic recovery are concentrated in the service and retail sectors; in fact, the fast food industry is growing at twice the rate as the rest of the economy, according to The Nation’s Annie Shields. As a result, St. Louis is highly unlikely to be the last American city to be hit with a fast food strike.
h/t: MSNBC.com
Stand down Twinkies hoarders, you can start eating your secret stash.
Twinkies will hit store shelves nationally by late July, Michael Cramer, executive vice president of Hostess Brands LLC told NBC News on Thursday. “We expect to be making and selling in July,” he said. “Probably the later half of the month before the product hits the stores.”
All of the classic Hostess snack brands will return, some making their return in August and September. Hostess Donettes and some of the snack cakes will be among the first to return. And “Twinkies for sure,” Cramer said.
In November, all 36 Hostess Brands, Inc., plants shut down after an extended stand-off with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. That Hostess company has almost completely wound down its operations, selling its assets in pieces. The bulk of the Hostess Snacks brands the public knows best — Twinkies, Cup Cakes, Ho Hos, Zingers, Ding Dongs and Suzy Q’s — were purchased in April for $410 million by hedge funds Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. Other Hostess lines, such as Wonder bread, went to affiliates of Flowers Foods, while its Beefsteak bread brand was snatched up by Grupo Bimbo, S.A.B. de C.V.
It is the new company, Hostess Brands, LLC, that will start hiring this weekend to resume operations with 200 employees at the Dolly Madison Bakery in Columbus, Ga., one of the locations shuttered in November.
As the hiring resumes, it will not be in conjunction with the unions, Cramer said. “We’re sure not going to invite the unions in. We don’t have to do it,” he said. Though of course nothing prevents the workers from unionizing down the line, he said.
But when Twinkies return to the shelves after an absence of more than six months, it will find competition.
Flowers Foods, Inc., which purchased some of Hostess’ other assets, has its own Twinkies lookalikes. Its Blue Bird brand sells Bingles while its Mrs. Freshley label sells Dreamies cream-filled cakes. McKee Foods’ Little Debbie brand also makes its own Twinkies twin called a Cloud Cake. The name’s even trademarked.
A spokesman for Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread baker and the owners of Sara Lee and Entenmann’s brands in the United States, on Wednesday declined to say whether it was considering its own Twinkies competitor in the United States. But should Grupo Bimbo decide to jump into the fray, it has a pretty good options on hand.
Bimbo already makes a Twinkies lookalike in Mexico called Submarinos, which are available with vanilla, chocolate or strawberry filling. Bimbo Bakeries USA since 1997 has been importing strawberry-filled Submarinos into the United States under its Marinela brand catering to Hispanic customers. In 2012 it started importing the vanilla ones as well, a company spokesman said.
After this story was originally published, a reader sent a picture of another Twinkies clone he said recently hit shelves in Los Angeles. The packaging of the new Golden Creme Cakes state they are made by the Sara Lee division owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA. However, a spokesman for the company declined to confirm they are new Sara Lee products.
The hard-core Hostess fan will return to Hostess, but the discretionary snackers will be the key market to regain, predicted Gary Karp, the executive vice president at Technomic Inc., a food industry research and consulting firm. “Their absence has allowed people to try a variety of products that are out there,” Karp said.
h/t: NBCNews.com
ATTLEBORO — As many as 25 students at Coelho Middle School were denied meals or told to throw their lunches away Tuesday because they could not pay or their pre-paid accounts did not contain enough money, school officials said today.
Parents said some of the children cried after they were not allowed to eat or had to toss out their lunches.
School officials said an on-site employee from Whitson’s, the school system’s school lunch provider, apparently gave the order not to extend meals to students who could not pay or whose credit was already overextended. SOURCE
Imagine, for a second, the mindset required to force hungry children to throw food in the garbage? It’s not like the food was given to a child that could pay, it was just wasted. It’s the ultimate in conservative thought: I will gain nothing from this but the satisfaction of knowing you did not get a free meal.
This is why privatizing government functions is a bad idea is almost every circumstance but particularly in those that provide a direct service. Once a profit motive is introduced, it ceases to be about fulfilling a public need, now it becomes about making a profit by any means necessary. The idea of providing children a nutritious meal so they can grow and learn and contribute to society becomes a narrow and selfish pursuit of the bottom line. If children are left to go hungry, well, that’s capitalism for you!
It’s not as if they couldn’t feed them, the district has a policy where a student that can’t pay for the regular meal will be provided with a cheese sandwich and milk. It’s not the most appealing of meals but it will certainly keep a child fed. But instead, this privately run company decided that over twenty kids simply shouldn’t eat if it was going to cost the company money:
Parents said they were told by their children that some pupils in the cafeteria line had already picked up their lunch and were told at the checkout they had to throw it away.
Victoria Greaves, 11, a fifth grader at Coelho, said a cashier told her to throw away her lunch because there was not enough money in her account. She said she threw her meal away and got nothing to eat.
We’re left to wonder what the cashier planned on doing if the child refused to comply. Would they physically take the food away? Was the couple of dollars really that important?
The larger question that isn’t being asked yet is how did we come to a point where anyone can even think that depriving children of food is a moral thing to do? In the richest nation on Earth, are we so blinded by greed and the pursuit of the Holy Dollar that we don’t even consider that going out of our way to let a child go hungry to be the act of a sociopath? Would we rather throw food in the garbage than let someone eat it for free? Who thinks that way?
House Republicans recently proposed cuts to nutrition assistance that will kick 280,000 low-income children off automatic enrollment in the Free School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Those same kids and 1.5 million other people will also lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamp benefits) that help them afford food at home.
Ah. Well, that explains that, doesn’t it?
(via occupy-my-blog)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A bankruptcy judge has given final approval for the sale of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and many of Hostess Brands’ other assets, clearing the way for the iconic products to return to shelves.
Hostess snacks — including Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and Zingers — were sold for $410 million to a joint venture of private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. They expect to return the product to store shelves this summer.
Wonder Bread and most of Hostess’ other bread brands was purchased by baker Flowers Foods for $360 million. The company has yet to give a date for when those breads will be back in stores. On Thursday, Judge Robert Drain also approved the $31.9 million sale of the Beefsteak bread brand to baker Grupo Bimbo, a Mexico-based company that is one of the largest U.S. bakers.
None of these products have been manufactured since Hostess, which was already in bankruptcy court, went out of business during a strike by members of its bakers’ union. The company has been selling off its brands since then to try to raise money for creditors. Thursday’s sales account for more than $800 million.
Flowers is buying 20 bakeries and about 38 depots with its purchase; Apollo and Metropoulos are buying five bakeries.
Court approval is still pending for some other winning bidders, including privately held McKee Foods’ purchase of the Drake’s snack business for $27.5 million, and United States Bakery’s $28.85 million winning bid for Hostess’ Sweetheart, Eddy’s, Standish Farms, and Grandma Emilie’s bread brands, along with four bakeries.
h/t: FOX2now.com
When processed pastries are outlawed, only outlaws will have processed pastries.
Sickening to see it warrant a suspension.
(via recall-all-republicans)
Hostess Brands is close to announcing that it has picked two investment firms — C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo Global Management — as the lead bidders for its Twinkies and other snack cakes, according to a source close to the situation.
The so-called stalking horse bid would be for more than $400 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. It would serve as the baseline offer for the business and could be topped by others at an auction. A judge would have to approve any final sale.
Earlier this month, Hostess chose a $390 million offer by Flowers Foods , maker of Tastykake products, as the stalking horse bid for several brands including Wonder bread and Drake’s.
On Monday, Hostess said it chose McKee Foods Corp, maker of Little Debbie snack cakes, as the initial bidder for its Drake’s cakes, which include Ring Dings, Yodels and Devil Dogs. It also chose United States Bakery as the lead bidder for four of its smaller bread brands plus bakeries, equipment and depots.
h/t: NBCNews.com
DETROIT — The founder of Domino’s Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.
Tom Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn’t health care but a “gravely immoral” practice.
He filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court. It also lists as a plaintiff Domino’s Farms, a Michigan office park complex that Monaghan owns.
Monaghan offers health insurance that excludes contraception and abortion for employees. The new federal law requires employers to offer insurance including contraception coverage or risk fines.
H/T: HuffPo
DETROIT (AP) — Twinkie lovers, relax.
The tasty cream-filled golden spongecakes are likely to survive, even though their maker will be sold in bankruptcy court.
Hostess Brands Inc., baker of Wonder Bread as well as Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Ho’s, will be in a New York bankruptcy courtroom Monday to start the process of selling itself.
The company, weighed down by debt, management turmoil, rising labor costs and the changing tastes of America, decided on Friday that it no longer could make it through a conventional Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. Instead, it’s asking the court for permission to sell assets and go out of business.
But with high brand recognition and $2.5 billion in revenue per year, other companies are interested in bidding for at least pieces of Hostess. Twinkies alone have brought in $68 million in revenue so far this year, which would look good to another snack-maker.
Hostess has said it’s received inquiries about buying parts of the company. But spokesman Lance Ignon would not comment on analysts’ reports that Thomasville, Ga.-based Flowers Foods Inc. and private equity food investment firm Metropoulos & Co. are likely suitors. Metropoulos owns Pabst Brewing Co., while Flowers Foods makes Nature’s Own bread, Tastykake treats and other baked goods. Messages were left for spokesmen for both companies on Sunday.
“We think there’s a lot of value in the brands, and we’ll certainly be trying to maximize value, both of the brands and the physical assets,” Ignon said Sunday. He said it’s possible some of Hostess’ bakeries will never return to operation because the industry has too much bakery capacity.
Then last week thousands of members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike after rejecting the company’s latest contract offer. The bakers union represents about 30 percent of the company’s workforce.
By that time, the company had reached a contract agreement with its largest union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which this week urged the bakery union to hold a secret ballot on whether to continue striking. Although many bakery workers decided to cross picket lines this week, Hostess said it wasn’t enough to keep operations at normal levels.
The company filed a motion to liquidate Friday. The shuttering means the loss of about 18,500 jobs. Hostess said employees at its 33 factories were sent home and operations suspended. Its roughly 500 bakery outlet stores will stay open for several days to sell remaining products.
News of the decision caused a run on Hostess snacks at many stores around the country, and the snacks started appearing on the Internet at inflated prices.
h/t: AP.org
On today’s edition of “WallBuilders Live,” David Barton claimed that he was recently in Michigan where he was shocked to learn that there is “not a single grocery store in the city limits of Detroit”:
Detroit has a population of over 700,000 and Barton is claiming that there is not one grocery store within a city this size? How exactly does he think these people are getting food?
Now I haven’t been to Detroit in person, but I do have access Google Street View which allows me to find various of grocery stores located within the city in about two minutes, like University Foods located at 1131 Warren Ave W, Detroit, MI 48208:
H/T: Kyle Mantyla at RWW
As part of a new advertising campaign for the candy, ‘Mike and Ike’ have announced that they are divorcing so Ike can pursue a career in the arts and Mike can fulfill his dream of becoming a “music legend.” Advertisers hope that the “fight” between Mike and Ike can win the candy more attention among consumers, and it already grabbed the attention of Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who is upset that Mike and Ike are a gay couple. Perkins said today on his radio bulletin.
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
