Phillips Foods Closing Baltimore Plant, Cutting 100 Jobs

It's a theme I've often repeated here at TDS...while the national media keeps selling the bogus "recovery" narrative, the local outlets haven't received the message. Here is the Baltimore Business Journal with the details:

Phillips Foods Inc. plans to close its Locust Point manufacturing and distribution facility in July, a move that will result in the loss of 100 jobs.

The seafood distributor said the layoffs will impact 13 percent of its Maryland workforce.
As part of the move, Phillips is shifting its warehousing and distribution to Baltimore-based Merchants Terminal Corp. with additional support from Dot Foods.

“We moved into our current plant in 2002 in hopes of growing our company, but given the difficult economic conditions and industry dynamics, we have not grown as we anticipated,” Phillips spokeswoman Caroline Tippett said in a statement. “Our Baltimore plant is simply too big, and we don’t have the capacity to fill the space.”

On a national level, statistics can be used to try and hide the ongoing devastation in the economy. But businesses have to make decisions based upon real world conditions. It's just that simple.

AdvancePierre Foods Plant (Iowa) To Close, 300 Will Be Laid Off

There were not many details included with this mass layoff story from EasternIowaOnline.com:

ORANGE CITY, Iowa - An Ohio-based company has told employees that its northwest Iowa meat plant in Orange City will close by the end of the year.

Shuttering the AdvancePierre Foods plant will eliminate an estimated 300 jobs.

Mayor Les Douma says the plant manager told him about the closing late Tuesday.

A representative from the Cincinnati, Ohio-based company didn't immediately return a call Wednesday from The Associated Press.

Douma says the plant has "a great economic impact on the entire region."

The company supplies meat products and sandwiches to food-service, school, retail, club store, vending and convenience store markets.

And so it goes.

Green Mountain Coffee Executives "Baffled" By Declining Sales

The big news in the stock market this week was the plunging sales of Green Mountain Coffee, which caused the company's stock to sink dramatically. Here is CNN with the story:

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters shares plummeted Thursday after the company reported quarterly revenue that missed estimates and lowered its guidance for 2012.

Green Mountain (GMCR) shares sank nearly 40% in early morning trading Thursday, dipping to about $30 after closing Wednesday at $49.52.

The company's quarterly earnings came in line with expectations at 64 cents a share, though its $885 million in sales missed estimates of $972 million.

Green Mountain also reduced its fiscal 2012 sales guidance from between $4.3 and $4.5 billion to between $3.8 and $4 billion. The full-year earnings-per-share projection was cut from between $2.55 and $2.65 to between $2.40 and $2.50.

As usual in these situations, the suits don't have a clue:

In a conference call with analysts, Green Mountain executives said they didn't have a full explanation for why sales were weaker than expected. They suggested that low brewer machine sales and weak demand for holiday drinks during the warm winter -- like cider and hot cocoa -- were partially to blame.

"We're very positive about this business going forward, but there's a lot of moving parts," Green Mountain CEO Larry Blanford said.

Green Mountain currently dominates the single-serving coffee market with its popular Keurig, or K-Cup, machines.

It was one of the fastest-growing companies of the past decade and one of the best-performing stocks, handing investors 110% gains on an annualized basis until last fall.

Please allow me as a former Green Mountain customer to offer up a possible explanation. I used to love Green Mountain coffee after having discovered it more than a decade ago when it was still a small regional concern. I even went out of my way to order it online back when it was not available in the stores in my area.

Nowadays, I can even buy it in my local supermarket. But I don't. In fact, I ordered up my last ever batch of the stuff about a year ago. And you know why? Because the coffee now tastes like ass. I don't know what the difference is between how they make the stuff now and how they made it a decade ago. All I know is what my tastes buds tell me.

Somewhere along the way, Green Mountain became far more concerned with expansion than it did about putting out a good product. But that is par for the course in corporate America these days.


Bonus: Instead of some Green Mountain, how about some Green Day...because I came around on Green Mountain

USDA To Lay Off 1,000 Inspectors--Let Poultry Industry Self Regulate

If you eat chicken that you don't raise yourself, you need to read this story...and perhaps reassess your culinary choices. Here is Yahoo News with the details:

Chicken is the top-selling meat in the United States. The average American eats 84 pounds a year, more chicken than beef or pork. Sorry red meat, chicken is what's for dinner. And now the USDA is proposing a fundamental change in the way that poultry makes it to the American dinner table.

As early as next week, the government will end debate on a cost-cutting, modernization proposal it hopes to fully implement by the end of the year. A plan that is setting off alarm bells among food science watchdogs because it turns over most of the chicken inspection duties to the companies that produce the birds for sale.

The USDA hopes to save $85 million over three years by laying off 1,000 government inspectors and turning over their duties to company monitors who will staff the poultry processing lines in plants across the country.

The poultry companies expect to save more than $250 million a year because they, in turn will be allowed to speed up the processing lines to a dizzying 175 birds per minute with one USDA inspector at the end of the line. Currently, traditional poultry lines move at a maximum of 90 birds per minute, with up to three USDA inspectors on line.

Whistleblower inspectors opposed to the new USDA rule say the companies cannot be trusted to watch over themselves. They contend that companies routinely pressure their employees not to stop the line or slow it down, making thorough inspection for contaminants, tumors and evidence of disease nearly impossible. "At that speed, it's all a blur," one current inspector tells ABC News.

According to OMB Watch, a government accountability newsletter, cutbacks at the USDA have coincided with a significant rise in salmonella outbreaks. The group says 2010 was a record year for salmonella infection and 2011 saw 103 poultry, egg and meat recalls because of disease-causing bacteria, the most in nearly 10 years.

Perhaps the idiots in charge of the USDA these days forget why their agency exists in the first place--because back in the 19th century people routinely died from consuming contaminated food products made by producers who in the pursuit of maximum profits didn't give a shit if their customers got sick and died from eating their wares. In fact, tainted canned food was likely a major contributing factor to the demise of Sir John Franklin's arctic expedition in 1847 that was one of Victorian England's most famous calamities.

One of the reasons that this type of thing is being allowed to occur is that there are few Americans still alive who were around before the New Deal era, and thus have no experience of living in a time in which there was very little regulation of corporations. Most really seem to believe that the big corporations would never be so crass as to place their customers at risk in the name of increased profits if the government wasn't there looking over their shoulders. This is what 30 plus years of "free market" conservatives bashing the government at every turn has wrought--a credulous public that doesn't realize that corporate power is at least as much a threat to their individual liberty as big government, and that the best a modern industrialized society can hope for is that the two will effectively watchdog each other.

Like those chickens being taken to the processing plant, most Americans will continue to have this naive faith in the system until the day that salmonella or some other horrible food borne pathogen lays them into an untimely grave.


Bonus: Not really sure why, but this story brought this song to mind

Welch’s: 95 Percent Of Grapes In Southwest Michigan Destroyed

Here is another reminder that climate change doesn't mean just warming, but a greater frequency of weather EXTREMES. It was just a month ago when Michigan was basking in unprecedented late-winter 80 degree weather. And then came the reversal, as reported by a local Michigan television station:

SAINT JOSEPH, Mich. - For Welch’s grape growers, it was the most devastating frost in Michigan’s history. That’s according to the National Grape Cooperation, better known as Welch’s Foods.

Cold temperatures wiped out 95 percent of all the juice grapes in Berrien, Cass and Van Buren County.

“You know it’s a complete wipeout,” said John Jasper, a surveyor for Welch’s Foods. Jasper said more than 10,000 acres of juice grapes were destroyed Thursday morning across Southwest Michigan.

Jasper had a difficult job Friday. He and two other Welch’s surveyors tried to figure out how many grapes the company could expect this year at harvest. “I went through hundreds of acres before I found a spot that had a live bud,” he said.

“I’ve probably been to 100 farms in the last two days,” said Jasper. “The majority (are destroyed) 95 percent.”

According to the National Grape Cooperation, Berrien, Cass and Van Buren farmers collected $24 million in 2011. Jasper said in 2012 they would be lucky to net $2 million.

The situation gets worse for Paul Bixby of Bixby Orchards in Berrien Springs. “Mostly on this tree, everything is gone,” Bixby said pointing out a devastated apple orchard.

Bixby didn’t only lose the grapes. He estimates Thursday’s frost killed half of his apple crop. “You can see the black and you can see five in that cluster. All of them look the same.”
“A lot of these guys know the numbers and they know they’re in trouble,” said Jasper. He said so many juice grapes are gone it’s not cost effective for farmers to harvest the grapes that survived.

Jasper said Welch’s Foods gets one-sixth of their grapes from Southwest Michigan. “This is probably our worst year,” he said. The frost could force the company to change its recipe for some of its products.

I guess we should prepare for higher grape juice prices, among other things.


Bonus: Why Moby Grape, of course...what else?

Slimeball Defends Pink Slime For $45,000

The headline above was my best New York Post imitation. Anyway, here's the story from Think Progress:

The meat industry has been hammered for the weeks after it was revealed that some companies had been controversially using beef scraps mixed with ammonia hydroxide, called “pink slime”, as hamburger filler. This week, one passionate defender of pink slime emerged: Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

As we know, King enjoys touting his carnivorous habits while beating up on people who don’t eat meat. But meat producers have also been major financial backers of King, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, throughout his political career. A cursory glance at King’s fundraising records shows more than $45,000 in campaign contributions from the meat industry during his time in Congress. This cycle alone, two prominent PACs, the National Beef Cattleman’s Association and the National Council of Pork Producers, as well as Lynch Livestock, have already maxed out their contributions to King’s reelection campaign.

That money appears to have been well-spent. All this week, King has been defending pink slime — or “lean finely textured beef” as he calls it — to his constituents. Indeed, in every one of the half dozen town halls that ThinkProgress attended, King talked up pink slime unprompted. In Emmetsburg, for instance, he said pink slime was actually a “supplement” and an “enhancement.” In Algona, he pledged to hold congressional hearings not into pink slime, but into the “smear campaign” against pink slime.

How much do you want to bet that despite his meat obsession, asshole Representative Steve King has never in his life ever eaten Pink Slime? What's the matter with Iowa? How do you keep electing this fucking slimeball?


Bonus: Instead of Pink Slime, how about some Pink Floyd?

U.S. ‘Pink Slime’ Factories Shut Down Amid Outcry

I'm posting this story for anyone who thinks that all I do is wallow in negativity on this blog. If you'll recall, back on March 7th I posted about the use of so-called "pink slime," a horrifically nasty beef based food product, in U.S. school lunches. Well, proving yet again that you can get away with pretty much anything until you involve the kiddies, the resulting public outcry from that story has effectively killed the industry. Here is the Raw Story with the details:

Three factories that made so-called “pink slime” beef filler have shut down since public outcry about the ammonia-treated substance began last month, The Associated Press reported Monday.

Beef Products Inc. spokesman Craig Letch told AP that only one factory in the country, located in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, is still producing the stuff. Three others, in Texas, Iowa and Kansas, have reportedly been shut down.

The product, known as “lean, finely textured beef” to industry insiders, is comprised of connective tissue and other less-than-edible pieces of cows, which are mashed into a slimy, pink substance and treated with ammonia gas to kill off bacteria.

It is then added to ground beef as filler, to increase the product’s weight and, thereby, it’s price.

The goo was nicknamed “pink slime” by a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) scientists who blew the whistle once regulators in the Bush Sr. administration began allowing it in the human food supply. It was previously only considered suitable for products like dog food.

A public outcry over its use began after the U.S. government was revealed to have purchased tons of the stuff for use in school lunches. Soon thereafter, USDA whistleblowers alleged that “pink slime” had become so prevalent that it existed in up to 70 percent of ground beef sold in the U.S.

Since the outcry began, several major fast food chains have said they would no longer use the meat filler in their food products, and the USDA has lifted rules that required schools to use it.

See, I can be positive on those rare occasions when good news happens. You're welcome.


Bonus: Speaking of Pink, "One of these days I'm going to cut you up into little pieces"

Sealed Air Closing Two New York Plants, Laying Off 256

The always dreaded "economic reasons" were responsible for this mass lay off notice. Here is Plastic News.com (really?) with the story:

Sealed Air Corp. is closing two of its New York plants, according to WARN act notices filed Feb. 9.

The company will shutter plants in Rochester and Scotia, N.Y., for economic reasons, according to the notices.

The Rochester plant makes food packaging for Cryovac Inc., a division of Sealed Air. The closing will affect 186 workers. The plant will close May 10.

The Scotia facility manufactures polyethylene foam. It employs 70 and will close May 20.

I guess the famous advice that Mr. McGuire gave to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate that he ought to get into plastics no longer holds.


Bonus: "I want to say one word to you...plastics"

Sara Lee Plant in Alabama Closes, 128 Laid Off

First it was Twinkees, now it is Sara Lee. Here is the story from the Dothan Eagle:

A manufacturing plant that employs 128 people is closing in Dothan.

The Sara Lee/Colonial Baking Company bakery on Bell Street at Tate Drive will cease operations by May 21, Bimbo Bakeries USA announced on Thursday.

Sara Lee Corp. sold its North American bakery business to Grupo Bimbo last November for $709 million. The bakery in Dothan produces bread and buns and will shift production to other sites in Bimbo’s manufacturing network.

And there was the usual Corporate FlackSpeak:

“This was a difficult decision because of the highly engaged team of associates and the great community tradition at the Dothan bakery,” said Kevin Williams, regional vice president of operations for Bimbo’s Southeast region. “However, after careful analysis and consideration, we found it necessary to address the aging facility that made it difficult to compete in the marketplace.”

“Our customers and consumers in Dothan and throughout the state are very important to us,” said Tony Gavin, regional vice president of sales for Bimbo’s Southeast region. “Recognizing that Alabama is a valuable marketplace, we will continue to operate 183 distribution routes across the state. In fact, 38 of these routes were added within the last two years as an investment in this market.”

Because there is no better "investment in a market" than laying off a bunch of your customers.


Bonus: I challenge you to watch this and not have the jingle get stuck in your head

Pink Slime: It's What's For Lunch At Your School

You know things are getting crazy in this country when a "food product" that has even been rejected by McDonald's is deemed suitable school lunches. Here is Common Dreams with the details:

"Pink slime," the mixture of connective tissue and beef scraps also known as "Lean Beef Trimmings," made news last month when McDonald's announced it would no longer use the controversial product. However, a report today shows that the U.S. Department of Agriculture thinks it is still a suitable product for the nation's children, as it is going to purchase millions of pounds of the product for the national school lunch program.

Okay, that sounds pretty gross. What are the particulars?

Partners in ‘Slime’: Feds Keep Buying Ammonia-treated Ground Beef for School Lunches

Made by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps normally destined for dog food and rendering, BPI’s Lean Beef Trimmings are then treated with ammonia hydroxide, a process that kills pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli. The resulting pinkish substance is later blended into traditional ground beef and hamburger patties. [...]

The USDA, which plans to buy 7 million pounds of Lean Beef Trimmings from BPI [Beef Products, Inc.] in the coming months for the national school lunch program, said in a statement that all of its ground beef purchases “meet the highest standard for food safety.” [...]

...the USDA now finds itself in the odd position of purchasing a product that has recently been dropped by fast-food giants McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell.

You have to love the audacity of an administration which basks in the publicity of a First Lady who is supposedly all about getting children to eat healthy that does nothing to stop practices like this. Hey, liberals and progressives, when are you going to get it through your thick skulls that Obama the champion of the people is nothing but a Hologram, and his wife is merely part of the image?

The story itself ends with a priceless quote:

Retired microbiologist Carl Custer told The Daily:

“We originally called it soylent pink. We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat.”

Nope, but I would gather that it s a lot cheaper. Which means the government doesn't have to pay as much while the company makes a big fat profit. Everybody wins. Well, except the kids, of course.


Bonus: Next up, The Jimbo Burger

Buying Generic Groceries Doesn't Save Shoppers As Much As It Used To

Here is an interesting story from the Consurmerist about the effects of the Great Recession on American grocery shopping habits:

Used to be, back in the days of yore, shoppers looking for a deal in the grocery store could go for a generic store brand item instead of the more expensive name brands. But lately the gap between those two options has been narrowing, to the point where store brands sometimes even cost more than their previously pricier counterparts.

Many consumers turned to the tactic of store brands during the recession, to the point that now, a lot of us actually prefer our generic items for the basics at the grocery store and have become loyal to those brands instead.

According to the Wall Street Journal (via Time), stores have caught on and are raising the prices of their private-label goods, to the tune of 5.3% on nonperishables and a whopping 12% for perishables. Name brand prices aren't rising at the same pace, at only 1.9% and 8% on those respective categories, but still cost on average about 29% more than generic brands.

Stores have caught on and updated their boring, bland brand labels and created more exciting, attractive packaging for their products. And they're not afraid to price those items above their name brand counterparts. For example, Target's Archer Farms line of snacks and drinks are easily recognizable and loved by customers for their pretty logos and familiar branding.

So, it will probably just be a matter of time before some company starts marketing a GENERIC generic line of grocery products. No wonder long time beloved brands like Hostess and Kraft are reeling these days.


Bonus: This song is so Low Budget that it's still on vinyl!

PepsiCo to Cut 8,700 Jobs

The economy is doing great...the economy is doing great....the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...the economy is doing great...

That's what the utterly manipulated stock market is supposed to get you to believe. Meanwhile, in the real world where people actually live and work--or recently increasingly don't work--the mass layoff stories form a different narrative entirely. Everyone knows that bovine America loves its snack foods, so if the economy is going so great, how do you reconcile that with this story from Bloomberg?

PepsiCo Inc. plans to cut 8,700 jobs and boost marketing spending for its brands by as much as $600 million as Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi works to turn around the world’s largest snack-food maker.

The job cuts, which represent about 3 percent of PepsiCo’s global workforce, and other measures may save about $1.5 billion by 2014, the Purchase, New York-based company said today in a statement.

Nooyi is working to boost U.S. beverage sales and regain market share from Coca-Cola Co., the world’s largest soft-drink maker. Profit this year will decline about 5 percent on a constant-currency basis and then increase at a high single-digit percentage rate starting in 2013, PepsiCo said.

Yep--and the reason why profits will rise next year is there will be 8,700 fewer workerbee parasites dampening the value of the shares in the portfolio of CEO Indra Nooyi. Ain't crony capitalism grand?


Bonus: Dedicated to Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi - "You're a rich girl...and you've gone too far. Cause you know it don't matter anyway"

Saturday Night Video - Patton Oswalt Skewers KFC

KFC announced this week that there will be layoffs at the company's corporate headquarters, as reported by Courier-Journal.com:

Burdened by lackluster results in its U.S. business, KFC Corp. laid off an unknown number of employees on Thursday at Yum! Brands headquarters in Louisville.

Being one of America's biggest purveyors of obesity and death, you just knew this particular corporation would be well versed in corporate FlackSpeak:

“We made the difficult but necessary decision to reorganize KFC to reduce cost, maximize efficiencies and better reflect our current business needs,” said Karen Sherman, senior director of communications at KFC Corp. “While we have increased investment in some positions, we also have eliminated others at our corporate offices and in the field.”

But wait...there's more:

“We are doing everything possible to help support those affected by the reorganization in their transition,” Sherman added in her emailed statement.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Actually, I have to hope that if someone at KFC is getting laid off, it will be the diabolical genius who invented the KFC Famous Bowls. Though I've never had one, their absolute sheer nastiness was brilliantly captured a couple of years ago in a very funny bit by comedian Patton Oswalt.

"Just make me a failure pile in a sadness bowl."

Enjoy!

Kraft Foods to Lay Off 1,600

Another day, another mass layoff notice in corporate America that is being spun as a positive. Here is Business Insider with the details:

Kraft Foods has announced it will lay off 1,600 North American workers as it readies to split the company in two.

Nearly 40% of cuts to headcount will come from the U.S. salesforce and corporate arm over the next 12 months.

That's an awful lot of jobs cuts. So how do you think they'll corporate FlackSpeak their way out of this one?

"When we announced our decision to create two world-class companies last August, we said both would be leaner, more competitive organizations," CEO Irene Rosenfeld said. "For the past year, the North American team has been working to streamline operations to deliver sustainable top-tier performance and continue to invest in our iconic brands. We're confident that this transformational work will improve effectiveness and fuel the future growth of both companies."

Question: How do you tell when a CEO is lying?

Answer: when you see her lips move.

To sum up, Kraft is firing 1,600 people from middle class jobs so they can be cast out into an economy where statistics say they will be LUCKY to land a new position making 40% or so less than what they made before with reduced benefits, and yet somehow those people along with millions of others who are in the same predicament are somehow going to find the pocket change to buy more of Kraft's products and "fuel the future growth of both companies." And if you believe that, I've got some crappy, over-processed American cheese slices to sell you. They're health food, don't you know.


Bonus: Sure, it's the OTHER brand that tastes mostly like oil and water

Archer Daniels Midland to Cut 1,000 Jobs

More job loss fun in the agriculture sector was had when it was announced today that agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland is going to lay off 1,000 employees. Here is Market Watch with the details:

Archer Daniels Midland said Wednesday that it will slash about 1,000 jobs, or roughly 3% of its total workforce, in an effort to cut costs and boost profit. Most of the positions set to be eliminated are salaried, and the cuts are expected to reduce the company's costs by $100 million a year.

The announcement was accompanied by some classic corporate FlackSpeak:

"To ensure that we can continue to compete effectively in our global markets, we are taking actions to streamline our organization and achieve significant, sustained cost reductions," said Patricia Woertz, ADM's chief executive, in announcing the plan. "These actions will help us enhance our productivity and earnings power."

Woertz then added: "Because after we get rid of these 1,000 losers, those who are left will be so scared of being next on the chopping block that they won't mind taking up the slack. As for me, I'll be in my office preparing my golden parachute."


Bonus: Dedicated to Archer Daniel Midlands Chief Executive Patricia Woertz..."Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch"

Hostess Brands on the Verge of Bankruptcy, Possible Liquidation

Let me start off this post by saying that Hostess makes shitty products. Their snack cakes alone have contributed as much as any single factor to the obesity epidemic in America. And Wonder Bread is actually a crime against the fine art of baking. Still, it's tough to see anyone facing the prospect of losing their job, especially right before the holidays. Here is the New York Post with the details:

Hostess Brands, America’s biggest bakery, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy again — perhaps as early as next month, The Post has learned.

Staying out of Chapter 11 is proving tough for the Twinkies maker, a source said, adding the question now is whether it will be a pre-packaged bankruptcy or not.

“We are working hard to keep it out of [Chapter] 11,” another source close to the months-long talks with lenders and unions said.

The tipping point: Hostess maintains it cannot afford to stay current on its $700 million in outstanding loans and keep contributing to the unions’ pension plans, sources said.

Hostess has not been paying future pension benefits since August, thereby breaking its union contracts.

Even with the pension expense savings, the company still needs more money within the next several weeks. And private-equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, which holds a controlling ownership in Hostess, will not reinvest capital unless it gets its union concessions, one source said.

“I would read that as pretty drastic,” another source said. “It’s not easy to resolve that kind of issue.”

It's an all too common theme these days, lose your benefits or lose your job altogether. Here is a telling quote:

A Hostess worker said, “We understand that, should we pursue some form of legal action to require the company to live up to the terms of the contract, they may close, but we have come to believe that they will close anyway.

So what exactly will bankruptcy mean?

Much is at stake for Twinkie the Kid. The firm filed for Chapter 11 in September 2004 and spent 4 1/2 years there before Ripplewood in February 2009 bought it after gaining union concessions.

There is a concern that if it files again, the result could be liquidation with many of its brands, including Hostess, Wonder, Nature’s Pride, and Drake’s, sold for cash.

In that scenario, the first to be paid would likely be the company’s lenders, including General Electric, Monarch Alternative Capital and Silver Point Capital.

The unions will likely rank behind them in a bankruptcy, and Ripplewood’s equity stake would be wiped out, sources said.

So typical, the financial institutions get paid while the workers get the shaft. Just another sad tale of modern corporate America. Almost makes me wish I had some comfort food to help me forget all my troubles.