Dallas, TX – Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies, Wonder bread and Ding Dongs is telling the Teamsters and Baker’s Unions that it is making them a final offer on cost cutting measures or the snack cake maker is going to have to ask the bankruptcy court to do it for them.
Hostess Brands Inc. is expecting the unions to accept lower pension costs and changes to work rules. They also want to outsource some delivery jobs.
The high stakes game going on between the company and its unions could lead to the actual demise of the Twinkie !
Hostess has said that if the unions reject the offer than they will ask the court to completely void the union’s collective bargaining agreement. The Unions said that will lead to a strike.
Ken Hall, general secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters, commented that the union would reject the offer and issue a counter proposal today. They claim they were already forced to make massive concessions in 2008.
Workers represented by the Teamsters and the bakery and confectionary workers’ unions voted in February to authorize a strike, and Hall vowed Saturday that workers would walk off the job if the bankruptcy judge agrees to the company’s cuts.
Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn said that if workers strike, the company would be forced to close its doors and liquidate its assets.
Rayburn rejected the notion that consumers were becoming more health conscience leading to lowers sales of the company’s products and said the company was only losing money due to extraordinary high labor costs.
Rayburn said,
“If that were the case and that was sort of the downfall, there wouldn’t be any chocolate companies out there either. There’s a market for Twinkies and Ho Hos and Ding Dongs.”
Will our generation see the demise of the Twinkie ?