Hostess Twinkie Kneads Your Dough

Twinkie Kneads Your Dough as Hostess faces financial failure…

For more Dough, Bakery Union Killed 18,500 jobs

On Nov 16, 2012, Hostess Brands announced they are seeking permission to close its operations in a a federal bankruptcy court. CEO Gregory Rayburn claimed Hostess does not have “financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike” by 5,000 union employees of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.

18,500 employees lost their jobs as Hostess shut down 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers nationwide, and closed 570 outlet stores. Before Friday’s shutdown, Hostess baked 500 million Twinkies and 27 million loaves of Wonder Bread annually for yearly sales of about $2.5 billion.

According to CNN, 6,700 Hostess employees of the Teamsters union ratified their own concession deal while the Bakery Union voted against the concessions.

Was the demise of Twinkie Town also related to the ‘Twinkies Tariff’ imposed by Congress? According to the Christian Science Monitor, economists believe the Sugar trade tariffs passed by Congress in 1934 forced US confectioners to pay almost twice the global market price for sugar. Apparently, Hostess decided unions were easier to fight versus the sugar lobby when they needed to cut costs to stay in business.

Mr. Edwards, an economist at the conservative Cato Institute, believes Congress and the Obama administration need to use Hostess as Case study for Policy reform and he asks, “We’ve got to understand why manufacturing in a lot of cases doesn’t seem to be profitable anymore.”

Policymakers need to reform lobbying regulations and union laws to free labor markets in order for America to be competitive in the global marketplace.

Obama’s Twinkies Cliff?
Thanks to Obamacare and Unions, you can keep your job with a pay cut or drive your company out of business and reap the fruits of unemployment benefits…

“	They’ve been holding this over our head for a long time and now it’s here. They had to do it. I don’t have to deal with that anymore. The things that they were trying to do to us, it wasn’t fair. They always hold that over our heads, that they’ll close it down. So, I’m like, ‘OK. Close it down.’ We’re not making a whole lot of money out here and then we got to take a pay cut like that. Then you got your health benefits going up. They stopped paying into the pension fund. …. Our plan is to find another job. We have unemployment, but nobody wants unemployment without the health benefits. So, we’re pretty much going to find another job.	”
—-Lamont Phillips, an oven operator and the president of the local union

USA today reports Hostess is trying to lose the fat like many Americans by taking a bite out of high costs. The demise of Hostess may also be related to the increased consumption of healthy snacks. USA today also noted the majority of Hostess employees are unionized resulting in high pension and medical benefit costs whereas most of Hostess competitors are not unionized.

Twinkies, the Snack that could survive the apocalypse(1) didn’t have the energy to survive the union

Ding Dong: The Twinkies Fix Reaches the End of the Line

Twinkies Commercial by Buffalo Bob of the Howdy Doody Show in the 1950s

For Music Monday, R.I.P. Twinkies: A Tribute Song to the Legendary Angel Food

Related Tweets to Hostess Twinkie Kneads Your Dough…

@moneypenny008
Miss Moneypenny

http://twitpic.com/bdukmp Dough Boy lost his #Twinkie Defense as #Hostess faces financial failure http://trib.in/PYthbE #RIPTwinkie

10:41 PM Nov 16, 2012

http://twitpic.com/bdukmp For more Dough, Bakery Union Killed 18,500 jobs http://cnnmon.ie/TWLJzP #Hostess #RIPTwinkie

11:30 PM Nov 16, 2012

http://flic.kr/p/dtHrWJ Denny’s makes #Obamacare affordable with 5% surcharge http://bit.ly/ZAb3zM #FiscalCliff #Sgp #tCot

9:02 PM Nov 15, 2012

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Footnotes:

(1) Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days due to their lack of dairy ingredients. The banana filled ladyfinger-shaped spongecakes were created in 1930 and named after a Twinkle Toe Shoes advertisement on a St. Louis billboard. Hostess changed the filling to vanilla cream when the global banana trade was grounded during World War II.

Note: Miss Moneypenny posts Political Satire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/moneypenny008 and Twitpic at http://twitpic.com/photos/moneypenny008. Readers can also view my tweets and Twitter conversations at http://tweetree.com/moneypenny008.