What Killed the Twinkie?

By now, everyone knows what killed the Twinkie.

The company’s unions decided to go for broke. The company called the bluff. The Twinkie is no more.

This morning the Wall Street Journal editorialized that union work rules, accumulated over the years, had produced an infestation that could only be cured by letting the patient die.

The Journal explains:

Hostess posted sales of $2.5 billion in 2011 but lost $341 million and lacked the cash flow to hold out through the bakers union work stoppage that had only lost a few days of production so far. One reason is a labor-rule burden that by comparison makes Detroit look like Hong Kong.

The snack giant endured $52 million in workers' comp claims in 2011, according to its bankruptcy filing this January. Hostess's 372 collective-bargaining agreements required the company to maintain 80 different health and benefit plans, 40 pension plans and mandated a $31 million increase in wages and health care and other benefits for 2012.

Union work rules usually required cake and bread products to be delivered to a single retail location using two separate trucks. Drivers weren't allowed to load their own vehicles, and the workers who loaded bread weren't allowed to load cake. On most delivery routes, another "pull up" employee moved products from back rooms to shelves.

Those of us who do not inhabit this world are only vaguely aware of the gross inefficiencies union work rules impose.

Let’s not call it free enterprise.

Clearly, there’s a reason why only 8% of the private sector workforce is unionized. And there’s a reason why the future of unions lies in the public sector where grateful politicians can funnel taxpayer funds to union employees who have bankrolled the politicians’ re-elections, and where said employees are rewarded regardless of efficiency or effectiveness or profit.