pb4uski
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
....Lots o' blame to go around, but I think the "legacy" costs of pensions and such are being "blamed" for much of the problem, not so much current costs. Much the same as the much maligned Postal Service...
+1 From what I have read it seems that the required contributions to the multiple employer pension plan is killing them as the burden of other employers in the plan who have gone out of business has pushed the cost of all plan participants onto Hostess (rather than just the cost of legacy Hostess company employees. The bankruptcy filing indicates:
Because their workforce is heavily unionized, the Debtors also participate in 40 multiemployer pension plans, which, by law, exist only where one or more employers each contribute to a pension plan pursuant to one or more collectively-bargained agreements. The
Debtors' cash contribution obligations to these plans go beyond amounts attributable to the retirement benefits for the Debtors' own workforce; they also encompass the contributions attributable to the retirement benefits of the workforces of other employers who have ceased to exist or have otherwise withdrawn from the plans. By statute, the plans are structured to place the financial burdens of all of the plan's retirees upon those remaining companies that have active union employees. Over the last several decades, the number of companies and the active employee base supporting these pension plans have shrunk significantly, thus increasing the burden on the companies, such as Hostess, that remain.
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