Judge orders Hostess to mediate with union

A Hostess Twinkies sign is shown at the company's plant in Ogden, Utah, in this Nov. 15, 2012, file photo. / AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Twinkies won't die that easily after all.
Hostess Brands Inc. and its second largest union will go into mediation to try and resolve their differences, meaning the Irving, Texas-based company won't go out of business just yet. The news came Monday after Hostess moved to liquidate and sell off its assets in bankruptcy court citing a crippling strike last week.
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The bankruptcy judge hearing the case says that the parties haven't gone through the critical step of mediation and asked the lawyer for the bakery's union to ask his client, who wasn't present, if he would agree to participate.
The case is being heard by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York in White Plains, N.Y.
Hostess, founded in 1930, said Nov. 16 it is going out of business and laying off all of its 18,500 workers after a national strike crippled its operations. The privately held Texas company filed for protection in January, its second trip through bankruptcy court in less than a decade.
The company's planned liquidation would result in the closure of 33 bakeries, 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores, according to Hostess.
Thousands of members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike last week after rejecting in September a contract offer that cut wages and benefits. Hostess had already reached a contract agreement with its largest union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
"Many people have worked incredibly long and hard to keep this from happening, but now Hostess Brands has no other alternative than to begin the process of winding down and preparing for the sale of our iconic brands," CEO Gregory F. Rayburn said in a letter to employees last week.
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You must be right, unions never struck before Obama came into office. The first eight years of this century were paradise, workers and management worked together in harmony.
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So, you think the owners should be forced to hand owernship and control over to the unions?
Is this what American's have to look forward too? Work for 30-40 years creating a company and then be forced to turn the owership and control over to the workers?
Are you saying the ownership should never have control of their company?
The CEO is paying himself over $2 Million. If the company is failing under his leadership, how is this justified???
Greedy workers aren't threatening Hostess' future.
They were Bained.
You can't simply eliminate unions unless you want a repeat of something like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Unions DO, however, need to have their power controlled in similar fashion to restrictions on the power of the corporations.
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What's with the idiotic right wing crap comment?
These members are nothing but sheep being lead to slaughter just like the auto workers. Truth is the "UNION" doesn't give a crap whether you have a job or not. They only care about their own bank accounts and how fast they can fill them to overflowing.
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Thanks for proving my point about idiotic right wingers.
You would be a heck of a lot more accurate if you stuck "management" in your diatribe everywhere you said "union"
The fact that you think they are all sheep comes from your "management attitude.
I have had union friends buck the union and not participate is strikes when they thought the union was overbearing. I have also had friends who struck because the compensation for their work was so lousy it didn't make any difference if they lost their jobs or not.
Well all you right wing idiots are so locked in concrete you cant see any differences. You dont want to see any differences. Its like Jack Nicholson said in "A Few Good Men"....you cant handle the truth.
The overwhelming in this situation is that management has been a bad actor now for sometime.
But you idiotic right wingers will always say all Unions are evil when they are just a counterpart to management in a free market system.
Muslims have more open minds than a lot of the right wingers in this country
Give my regards to Flimbaugh
The union didn't kill Twinkie the Kid. Anti-ADHD, childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes campaigns did.
Meet the new boss same as the old boss.