Monday, December 05, 2011

MetroRegion Kansas City NEWS: Hostess Brands Inc. Freezes Pension Plan For Workers at Emporia Dolly Madison Plant

Among the new developments of the 21st Century- besides blatant corporate greed- is corporations reneging on union contracts and pension plans.


The latest corporate liar is Hostess Brands- who last week announced they are freezing union pension plans- in other words not paying the company's share- for all their union production workers.

Hostess Brands is a re-organized spin-off of Interstate Bakery Inc. that used to be headquartered here in Kansas City and was regrouping after a 2009 bankruptcy.

In the MetroRegion- this affects a Dolly Madison bakery and distribution center in Emporia Kansas- about 90 miles southwest of downtown Kansas City.

According to this story in the EMPORIA (KS) GAZETTE- the Bakery and Confectionery Union and Industry International Pension Fund said in a letter to their members that Hostess Brands hadn't paid their share of the pension plan for the past four months.


It's not mentioned in the GAZETTE story whether the executives of Hostess Brands Inc. will still received their bloated salaries AND retirement benefits....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The letter from the pension fund trusties also let us know that if we were not currently eligible to retire we would have to wait until we were 65 to start receiving beneifits. Which in my case means a loss of 8 years of benefits for a total loss to my family of $168,000.00.

Groucho K. Marx said...

Anon 5:57 am-

That is unacceptable!

This would be a sure-fire road to a strike- but then again the shape the company is in (not to mention Christmas coming up)- it would probably just wipe out what jobs you have in the long run.

What burns my hide is that these corporations are just openly thumbing their noses at the American worker and unless there is a MASSIVE citizen uprising against this sort of crap- it's not only going to get any better- but worse.

God Bless your family....

mfess said...

so if i'm not mistaken, when IBC came out of bankruptcy, they did so with the help of union investment, making the union(s) part owner in the corporation. now that the unions are also part of management (which seems to me to be a hugely blatant conflict of interest) what was their decision on this move? screw the laborers in favor of profit for their share of the company, or screw management in favor of supporting the laborer who they are legally obligated to support? my guess is that they chose the way that was most profitable to them regardless of any theoretical loyalty that anybody thought they had for either side.

Anonymous said...

well today is the deadline! I have 1 year and 6 months to get the Golden 80 which was the reason I didnt take two other jobs. Now I will have to work 13 more years to make the same amount I would've been getting in a year and a half. The sad thing is nobody gives a damn!

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