By the time brothers Robert and Joe Ryder meet for Thanksgiving, it'll be a
moot question whether the unions should have caved into management demands
from Hostess Brands Inc., makers of Twinkies and Wonder Bread.
In bankruptcy twice in a decade, the company said Friday it would shut
down, putting 18,500 people out of work, including more than 400 in the
Philadelphia area.
Despite its financial issues, the company blamed the bakers' union,
saying it refused to return from a strike and make the necessary concessions
to allow the company to survive.
Robert and Joe Ryder's union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
wrestled with the same question -- and the two brothers, both leaders in the
same Philadelphia-area local, took opposing points of view.
Joe Ryder, 55, a vice president at Local 463, agreed with the
concessions, albeit reluctantly. Robert Ryder, 54, head of the union,
disagreed, saying it would hurt Teamsters at other bakeries.
As it turned out, the national union went Joe Ryder's way, with Teamsters
working at Hostess voting 53 percent to 47 percent to accept the cuts. Local
463, which represents 130 drivers and others at Hostess' Philadelphia plant,
voted the same way.
It's been a long time since the two men, now union leaders with desk
jobs, drove trucks, but the philosophies they represent reveal the hard
choices workers must make in tough economies.
"Don't try to paint a picture that we don't see eye to eye," Joe Ryder
pleaded. There won't be any problem when the two brothers show up at their
mother's home on Thursday.
Robert Ryder said he didn't agree with accepting the concessions. "I
think the concessions are diluting the other contracts," he said. "When you
let an employer have an 8 percent wage reduction, [make members pay] $76
toward health coverage and no pension [contributions], I advocated that they
not vote for it.
"It would be a matter of time before they close anyway," Robert Ryder
said. "You can't just keep fixing the company [by making the workers take
cuts]."
Joe Ryder worked with the Teamsters' national Hostess strategy group. He
came to think the concessions were the only choice, with the outside hope of
buying the company some time.
"Nobody thought that Hostess was ever going to recover, but the Teamsters
looked at their books," he said. "We brought in the same restructuring
specialist used in the General Motor restructuring. We had shared sacrifice
and we got two seats on the [Hostess] board as part of the negotiations."
Even the Teamsters who had voted against the concessions "started to
understand that the job they had was better than any other job" available in
today's tough economy.
Last week, as a result of their decision, the Teamsters wound up in the
awkward situation of having to cross picket lines. Robert Ryder didn't like
that idea. He called his higher-ups to complain.
Robert Ryder said his brother helped come up with the workaround used at
the Philadelphia Hostess plant to avoid having the Teamsters cross the bakers'
picket line. Managers trucked the Wonder Bread and Ho Ho's to the Wal-Mart
parking lot across the street and the Teamsters took it from there.
"It does create an awkward situation," said Stephen Joyce, a labor
economist at Drexel University.
To Joyce, the Teamsters' strategy looked like a future-play: "Whoever
buys it," Joyce said, "[the Teamsters] want to be remembered as the heroes who
tried to work things out."
