Hostess Brands/Interstate Brands Business Practices from a person who lived it (My mom)
From 2001 to 2004, my mom worked for Interstate Brands (aka Hostess Brands) at their facility on Route 23 in Wayne, NJ. My mom like many of her co-workers were used as part-time on call employees. She was promised regular hours and full time status but never received such. Instead my dad, my brother, or I would take my mom to work at 2 am or 4 pm depending on when they called her in.
My mother explained that she and her fellow employees were expected to transfer hot cakes as they came out on assembly line from the ovens with gloved hands onto other smaller lines where the cakes were to be shrink-wrapped by automatic machines. Bad cakes were to be discarded and a high quality product was to be wrapped up and delivered to happy consumers. Such was not the case.
My mom, having worked in quality control position before, knew something was amiss the first week she began working there. She shook her head and realized this company would not last, not with what they were doing on the production lines.
Her and her group working a specific line (be it Twinkies, Yodels, Apple Pies, or HoHos) could transfer 300-600 cakes a minute onto the packing lines, but the baking machines were set to 1,000 cakes a minute leading to incredible waste. My mom and her workers tried hard as possible to keep up with his hectic pace but to no avail, 100's of cakes were lost a minute. You would think that someone would find an optimal speed to let the ovens produce just enough that workers can quality check the product and package at a comfortable pace. But not here.
My mom described at the end of her shift, she would find 10 large bins (5'x10'x5') packed full with cakes on her line. Employees were encourage to consume as much as possible at work but not to take any home.
Management looked the other way when it came to waste and when my mom and fellow union workers complained about aches and pains resulting from this rapid, ridiculous pace, the machines were slowed down for the union inspection and then ramped up several days later.
Production mattered more than anything, including employee well being, waste of raw material, and quality of product. The more the managers produced and packed, never mind the waste or employee injuries/burns, the more managers were rewarded.
My mom would often come home and consume Tylenol and painkillers to ease the pain. She was also injured twice on the job, a severe high ankle sprain and tearing of the muscles on her right hand and thumb which still bother her to this day and limit mobility.
In my opinion, this corporation knowingly and willfully drove this company into the ground on the backs of their workers and in spite of worker protest. Having set the building ablaze the robber-barons/arsonists are grabbing as many valuables as they can, all the while screaming fire, fire and pointing fingers, as they run out of building first leaving others to fend for themselves.
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That was back in the mid-70s, before he got into selling auto and heavy machinery parts.
Since you mentioned that you lived in New Brunswick, did you go to Rutgers? I went there - Livingston College - and ended up in the New Brunswick area for more than two decades while working for various newspapers as a reporter. We moved to Maryland about 20 years ago when my husband got a job at Fannie Mae. He's worked for several other companies in the DC area since leaving Fannie.
that if they were old enough to remember the assembly line spitting out too many chocolates for Lucy and Ethel to wrap?!
Thanks for the inside story of your Mom's time at Hostest Brands, politicaljack. What a trooper to go there and work for such neglectful and incompetent bosses because..well, we work most of the time because we need the Money! And, now they're trying to blame their Failings on the Workers.
And has a huge smile because of the Lucy clip, she's youtubing Lucy episodes as we speak!
