Taking Down Twinkies

Ed Feulner

Twinkies selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Union membership dropping steadily over the last decade….. The fate of the popular sponge cake was in the hands of the unionized men and women who work for Hostess Brands.  Or perhaps I should say “worked” -- past tense. Because a union-backed strike has killed what the Great Depression couldn’t……No, the union in question -- the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International -- doesn’t deserve all the blame. Hostess has struggled financially for years, losing $341 million last year alone. But it didn’t have to end this way…….As Heritage labor expert James Sherk points out, this is a major reason why union membership keeps falling. Unions keep losing members as existing unionized firms shrink, and they can’t recruit enough new members to take their place. This year, union membership hit another record low: 11.2 percent. In the private sector, just 6.6 percent of workers belong to a union……The National Labor Relations Board has gotten in on the act as well. “The NLRB just changed its rules to enable unions to cherry-pick who votes in union elections,” Sherk writes. “At one New York department store, unions recently formed a unit representing only women’s shoe associates on the second and fifth floors. None of the 300 other employees in the store got to vote.”  To Read More….

Twinkies and golden eggs

By Thomas Sowell

Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is one of those fairy tales with a heavy message that a lot of adults should listen to. The labor unions that have driven the makers of Twinkies into bankruptcy, potentially destroying 18,500 jobs (subject to court-ordered mediation), could learn a lot from that old fairy tale.  Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don't want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their employees more than the union wages, just to keep them from joining a union.

Why would they do that, if it is just a question of not wanting to pay union wages? The Hostess Brands bankruptcy is a classic example of costs created by labor unions that are not confined to paychecks.  The work rules imposed in union contracts required Hostess, which makes Twinkies and Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa…… To Read More…..

Hostess Bankruptcy Backstory: The AFL-CIO vs. SEIU Rivalry

by Ivan Osorio on November 20, 2012 · 0 comments in Economy, Employment, Features, Labor

The controversy over the impending shutdown of Hostess Brands — and who is to blame — has pitted two unions against each other. That isn’t particularly noteworthy, since different unions’ interest can diverge. What is noteworthy is the fact that the two unions in this standoff — the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) — are aligned with two different camps within organized labor that have had an uneasy relationship with each other: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO….. The latest round in this bout is just beginning. Get the popcorn.  For more on labor, see CEI’ s labor policy website, workplacechoice.org.   To Read More…..

As Union Bosses Spin Twinkies’ Demise, Bakers’ Union Boss Admits Union Knew Hostess Would Die

By: Labor Union Report (Diary) | November 17th, 2012

With the demise of 18,000 jobs weighing on their shoulders (though certainly not their consciousness’) and just in time for the Sunday morning talk shows union bosses are now trying desperately to point fingers at the victim (and Mitt Romney) for the union’s strike that ultimately destroyed Hostess and its 18,000 jobs. This blame game is going on despite the fact that the bakers’ union knew that its strike could, ultimately, lead to the company’s closure. Ranging from the AFL-CIO’s Big Daddy Rich Trumka to the bakers’ union bosses who pulled the trigger by calling the strike that killed Twinkie the Kid, unions are now in full spin mode to make America believe that it was the company and Wall Street–not the union that called the strike that caused the company to go out of business.