Twinkie Trouble
The company that brought Wonder Bread to our tables and Twinkies to our snack closets has shut its doors, leaving thousands without work, hundreds of bakeries closed, and money in the pockets of top Hostess executives. Labor unions and management couldn't come to an agreement and now a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge is set to consider Hostess's request to liquidate the company.
Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn told Fox Business last week that "the catalyst for our having to make the painful decision to shut down was the direct result of the strike that the bakers initiated." Union members do not see it that way. "The truth is that Hostess workers and their Union have absolutely no responsibility for the failure of this company. That responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the company's decision makers," said Frank Hurt, President of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco, Workers, and Grain Millers International Union.
The company and the union will never agree on what led to the demise of Hostess. Union workers wanted to protect their salaries and their pensions but couldn't agree with management, who is NOW padding their own pockets with millions after the liquidation.
Now the question is: what will happen to Twinkies and all of the employees that the company fired? It's the union versus management: both sides have completely different opinions about the future of the Hostess brand. The Union President representing Hostess employees says that he believes there's "more than a good chance" that a buyer quickly would buy the profitable parts of the company and give jobs back to union members. The CEO of Hostess disagrees saying "nobody wants to have anything to do with these old plants or these unions or these contracts."
The Union rules and the equipment might be a little rusty but what this company produces is not. Union workers might have put all of their eggs into the wrong basket when they decided to strike, a basket that no one is even holding. They took a major risk by jumping ship without a life preserver in hopes that another company will save them.
Could a sweet deal with a Mexican billionaire be waiting in the wings for Hostess and its workers? Maybe - But let's hope some deal comes through that puts the products from this iconic company back in our homes and get the employees that make them back to work.
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