(Post photo composite)
Most Hostess Brands workers have lost their jobs, but top executives will be rolling in the dough.
Hostess — the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs — won court approval to pay $1.8 million in bonuses to 19 senior managers so that they will stick around to help the 82-year-old bakery wind down its operations over the next year.
Following two trips through bankrutpcy court, Hostess plans to hang up its rolling pin after battling its unions and crippling debt for years.
The Irving, Texas-based company also received final court approval yesterday to sell its iconic brands.
In the wake of the shutdown, former workers said the company’s request to pay out bonuses was anything but sweet.
Fired New York Hostess driver Steve Galluzzo, who put in 24 years with the company, told The Post that hearing about the executives getting bonuses felt like “a knife to your stomach.”
Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Drain granted the company’s request at a hearing yesterday in White Plains, NY.
Top executives will get their normal pay, plus up to 75 percent of their annual salaries when their jobs are finished, if they hit all their performance targets. CEO Gregory Rayburn is not eligible for a bonus but will keep making $125,000 a month.
“The tasks these executives are performing are necessary,” he told The Post in an interview, adding that “having them at the company will make it easier for us to raise more in sales and pay pension costs.”
One Hostess insider questioned whether the company needed to pay up for all of those managers.
“The head of purchasing — what is he doing? And why can’t that job be outsourced to someone else?” the insider said.
America’s largest bakery has laid off more than 15,000 workers; the remaining 3,000 employees have been kept around to clean and close plants and bakeries.
Hostess will fire many of those remaining workers on Dec. 16, according to one insider.
At the same time, top-level executives have little to keep them busy.
“Nobody’s here. Everybody is using their own vacation. There is no point,” the insider said.
Meanwhile, Hostess revealed in bankruptcy court that 110 suitors had expressed interested in buying Hostess brands, including five national retailers.
Opening bids, it said, would likely be made in January.
One executive said Hostess made deliveries Monday to Walmart, its biggest customer, and he believed that if Walmart were to buy some of Hostess’ snack brands, it would likely offer them exclusively at its stores.
In that scenario, he said, Walmart would likely re-open a handful of the Hostess bakery plants and use its own existing drivers to deliver product.
Walmart already sells private label bread, and so it likely would not be interested in Wonder Bread.
“I hope people get jobs, but it will be dependent on specific buyers and what they need,” Hostess CEO Rayburn said.