Union demands threaten businesses

According to a Wall Street Journal article (Nov. 18, 2012), the bankruptcy filing of Hostess Twinkies revealed that the company was required to maintain 80 (yes, that is eighty) different health and benefit plans, 40 different pension plans and mandated a $31 million increase in wages, health care and other benefits for 2012 for its 18,000 employees.

Union work rules, of its dozen unions, usually required cake and bread products to be delivered to a single retail location using two separate trucks. Drivers were not allowed to load their own vehicles, and the workers who loaded bread weren’t allowed to load cake. On delivery routes, another “pull-up” employee moved products from back rooms to shelves.

How could any company survive a labor rule burden like that?

PHIL FORTIN

Sagle