Inside the Hostess Bakery | Hacker News Reader

Inside the Hostess Bakery

dailykos.com

9 pointsknappster7 comments

Hacker news?

Yeah, I was expecting something about the technical process behind making Twinkies.

The story of this company is that management and labour are in a pissing match. There's nothing technical in here and nothing insightful on the business side either. This is just PR spin, but its sort of irrelevant. Company has been a financial disaster, and its a dying business regardless, so it sucks for everyone.

No winners. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hostess-failed-hedge-fund...

Why are there no software unions, or engineering unions?

I believe there are some in Sweden. Something like 85% of their workforce is part of a union if memory serves.

-- EDIT --

Here are some stats: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=20167

Apparently Sweden used to be around 80% unionized in 1999, but the numbers have fallen pretty sharply since then. These days they sit a little below 70%, which is still remarkably high.

My understanding is that engineers and other technical people are often unionized in Sweden, but that could be as outdated as my 85% number above.

I'm a computer programmer for a Japanese semiconductor/electronics company, and I'm in the company union, as are all other employees.

Japanese unions are rather different tho; they do seem to serve some purpose as an employee-advocate, but are very strongly inclined towards compromise rather than confrontation. [When I first started working here, I was warned every year during the salary-negotiation period to be "prepared to strike!" ... eventually I thought to ask, and was told there had never been a strike... :]

While a lot of people might be annoyed at the lack of technical content, it is a reminder to all who are employees that the cause of Labor is far from secure.

For those of us who wish to be employers one day, it's a good example of what not to do.

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