Hostess bakers soundly rejected a restructuring plan yesterday aimed at saving the bankrupt maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies.
The move, not unexpected, follows a vote by members of the Teamsters, a second Hostess union, that narrowly approved the proposal that will cut wages and benefits.
The bakers’ union vote leaves the fate of America’s biggest bakery uncertain.
Bakery union members in all but one of its 35 plants have rejected the deal, Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn told The Post.
Each plant has several locals and they take their own actions.
Yet, the 5,000 Hostess Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union workers have acted in concert.
Rayburn said he would attempt to force the new Teamsters-approved contract on the bakers at an Oct. 3 bankruptcy hearing.
Rayburn said he needs to act quickly because the company’s lenders will not keep funding the business if he tries to negotiate a separate deal with the bakers.
If Hostess gains approval to force the proposed contract on the bakers, as expected, then it would be up to the bakers whether to strike.
The CEO said the company could not survive a bakers’ strike for any length of time.
“It would take one month [with new hires] to return production to normal levels,” a Hostess source said.
It was the Teamsters and the company’s creditors that spent all this year negotiating a new labor agreement, while the bakers’ union largely stayed on the sidelines.
The company believes by cutting pay and commissions by 8 percent in the first year, along with pension benefits, it will have the financial breathing room to invest heavily in capital expenditures and catch up on years of neglect.
By the third year of the labor agreement, Hostess would increase wages and start making some pension contributions. It’s imperative that Hostess will have improved operations by then since it could not survive at that time with the current rate of earnings and the savings from lowered labor costs, sources said.