The Demise Of The Twinkie: Hostess Files Motion To Liquidate

Wall Street Journal ^

[Sub-Driver]

The Demise Of The Twinkie: Hostess Files Motion To Liquidate

By Tom Gara

And that’s that: Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and more, announced this morning it has filed a motion with bankruptcy court to start liquidating the company immediately. A huge number of jobs are soon to be lost.

“Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce,” said CEO Gregory F. Rayburn in the statement, “and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

In a letter posted on a new site set up to communicate with employees and suppliers through the liquidation process, Mr. Rayburn pinned the blame on its striking union:

Despite everyone’s considerable efforts to move Hostess out of its restructuring, when we began implementing the Company’s last, best and final offer, the Bakers Union chose to stage a crippling strike. This affected Hostess’ ability to continue to make products and service its customers’ needs and pushed Hostess into a Wind Down scenario. As a result, we are forced to proceed with an orderly wind down and sale of our operations and assets. We deeply regret taking this action. But we simply cannot continue to operate without the ability to produce or deliver our products.

There’s no way to soften the fact that this will hurt every Hostess Brands employee. All Hostess Brands employees will eventually lose their jobs – some sooner than others. Unfortunately, because we are in bankruptcy, there are severe limits on the assistance the Company can offer you at this time.

[Hammerhead]

You think the bosses care? They have millions in their bank accounts and thouseands more bakeries to shake down before they retire.

[Hammerhead]

I consider this a a good micro example of a democratic economy. the leadership retains power and gets rich off the uneducated and ignorant masses they claim to represent.

I couldn’t care less about these idiots.

[CodeToad]

The old joke was that Twinkies could survive a nuclear war, yet, they couldn’t survive Obama Voters.

[usconservative]

Future? Hell son, there’s an Obama ho in the White House now.

[xzins]

Makes perfect sense to me

[Teacher317]

Apparently not popular enough to stay in business. They were doing something wrong.

It's tough to be popular enough to withstand an organization whose sole interest is taking as much as possible from the company from within, while giving as little as possible... even to the point of their own destruction. Even nature does not have such a vicious and insane parasite or parasitoid.

[Enterprise]

Gone in the twinkie of an eye. But the Union leaders don't give a twinkers damn. And as the workers lost their jobs and pensions they joined hands and sang in solidarity:

I'm a twinker
You're a twinker
She's a twinker
He's a twinker
Wouldn't you like to be a twinker too.

[Oberon]

I haven’t had a twinkie in a decade, and won’t miss the things. I don’t appreciate that many of the people in my hometown are going to be out of work due to this event, however. We have a Merita bread factory in town that is owned and operated by Hostess.

[Mamzelle]

Twink refers to a gay guy, many of whom linger around FR to make stupid vulgar jokes.

[jboot]

Apparently not popular enough to stay in business. They were doing something wrong.

You bet they were doing something wrong. They were a union shop.

[from occupied ga]

And your suggestion is??????

WTF? I don't work there and I'm not getting paid to solve their problems, but if they didn't have a problem, then they wouldn't be going out of business would they?

[RobertClark]

I just took a trip over to the DUmpster to see what the liberal take on this is. I am still washing the vomit out of my mouth. They view it as greedy Republicans breaking unions and are certain that someone with more socialistic views will rise up and start up all of these failing companies again:

All these GOP businessmen who are simultaneously raising prices in the most public manner possible -- WAY ahead of incurring any actual costs -- the public lay-offs because they could afford to stay in business the day before the election but not the day after (temper tantrums) and now the closing of a company because workers dared to require that company to comply with the law is all just coordinated Republican BS designed to produce outrage in non-thinking citizens.

So if a corporation can't exploit workers it can't/doesn't chose to stay in business?

Don't worry, the void will be filled by other companies and these sleaze balls will be out of the picture soon enough.

How much more detached from reality and simple accounting can these maggots be? There is no hope for these freakin' idiots, I am amazed that they think everything is greed as opposed to grasping simple business concepts.

[Dutch Boy]

I was thinking the same. I expect more and more of this in the future. As unions and the government suck the life blood out of a companies, the only solution is for the owners to go on strike.

[from occupied ga]

Like not shutting down all their bakeries in union states and moving to non-union states.

Exactly like that.

[Stand Watch Listen]

even Hostess cannot survive Obama
|trashbin of history|

[from occupied ga]

The workers will learn a lesson that they will never forget

Sadly I disagree. I suspect that very few of them learned anything. Just as you already said they will continue to blame the company.

[mykroar]

ROFL - excellent.

[mykroar]

True - and I like Hostess much more than Little Debbie. But it won’t be immediate and in the meantime there will be a lot of pain. I feel sorry for the non-union employees stuck in the middle (and surprisingly enough the Teamsters that agreed to the new contract - it was just the Bakers union).

[BatGuano]

Thanks Twink!

[nothingnew]

Great one!!! Sad, but great!

FMCDH(BITS)