should a bankruptcy judge allow the company to abandon current collective bargaining agreements. The company has said it needs out from under prohibitively expensive union pension plans and onerous union work rules in order to emerge from bankruptcy. The union has refused to budge since September on allowing Hostess to pull out of several Teamsters’ multi-employer pension plans that transfer the cost of retirements from companies driven out of business onto the backs of those “Teamsterized” companies that are still managing to survive. Hostess has repeatedly said it is willing to assume the cost of all of its own employees’ retirements as promised but they need out of the legacy plans to survive. Hostess is now well over a billion dollars in debt to upside-down IBT and Bakery union pension funds. “This vote shows that, while our Hostess members are willing to take significant steps to save the company, they can only go so far,” said Dennis Raymond, director of the Teamsters Bakery and Laundry Conference. Apparently allowing the company to shoulder only its own legacy costs, and perhaps expecting union members to both drive and unload their trucks and stock those trucks with both Hostess products and Wonder Bread in order to save their own jobs is a bridge too far for Hostess Teamsters, or at least those made aware of last week’s strike vote.
