I imagine that at this very moment a Seattle Times editorial board member is angrily scribbling away on an anti-union screed blaming striking bakery workers for the collapse of Hostess Brands and the loss of 18,500 Twinkie-making jobs. So I thought I'd give Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) president Frank Hurt the opportunity to present the union's position in his own words:
The crisis facing Hostess Brands is the result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement that resulted in two bankruptcies, mountains of debt, declining sales and lost market share. The Wall Street investors who took over the company after the last bankruptcy attempted to resolve the mess by attacking the company’s most valuable asset — its workers.
They sought to force the workers, who had already taken significant wage and benefit cuts, to absorb even greater cuts including the loss of their pension contributions. I have said consistently throughout this process that the BCTGM is a highly democratic organization and that our Hostess members themselves would determine their future. By an overwhelming majority, 92 percent, these workers rejected the company’s outrageous proposal, fully aware of the potential consequences.
Hostess had six CEOs in eight years, none of them with prior baking industry experience. Seattle Times business columnist Jon Talton (one of the few must-reads in the paper) documents decades of corporate missteps. So to blame Hostess's collapse on the union workers fighting to keep their pensions, rather than on the mismanagement of the highly paid executives at the top, would be a stupid argument. But a simple one: Hostess driven into bankruptcy by shortsighted striking workers. And simple messages are easy to sell.
