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Here’s a case of good news oozing out of bad news, and vice versa.
The bad news is that Hostess Brands has sunk into bankruptcy. It couldn’t stay afloat with the $860 million debt piled onto it when a group of Wall Street speculators took over the 82 year old company.
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The good news, though, is that devoted customers can still get their daily fix of five kinds of sugar, partially-hydrogenated oil, polysorbate 60, artificial flavors, and yellow dye number 5. Those are a few of the ingredients in Hostess Twinkies. When top executives filed for Chapter 11 in January, they assured an anxious nation that the corporation would keep chugging out Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and its other caloric delights while they deal with a few legal details to restructure Hostess.
Oh, goodie! But wait – those “details” constitute the bad news flowing out of the good news. The CEO says that to become “a highly competitive company that provides secure employment for our employees,” Hostess must make those employees less secure by busting their pensions, cutting their medical benefits, and abrogating their labor contracts. Does this Twinkie-in-Chief even understand how twisted his logic is? Apparently not, for he also asserts that one of the “tremendous inherent strengths” that Hostess can build on to become a viable company is “a talented and experienced workforce.”
Thanks for the complement, chief, but I’m guessing the workforce would prefer a decent pension. Without that, your words are as empty as the calories in a Ding Dong. Meanwhile, the union workers who literally deliver the goods for the company point out that they’ve already made concessions – and it’s time for the richly-paid corporate executives and profiteering speculators who loaded Hostess with all that debt to stop sucking all the cream out of the Twinkies.
“Hostess Brands, Twinkie Maker, Files for Bankruptcy,” The New York Times, January 12, 2012.