Debts beholden for ingredients like flour, sweeteners and cocoa pale in comparison to the exorbitant amounts owed to union health and pension funds. The top unsecured creditor on the list is the Bakery & Confectionery Union & Industry International Pension Fund, owed $944.16 million. In fact, 16 of the top 40 unsecured claims belong to union benefit funds.

Hostess operates in 48 states and has approximately 19,000 unionized employees, 7,500 of which are represented by the Teamsters Union. Furthering Hostesses problems surviving in the market, the Company has 372 separate labor agreements, while most of its competitors are not unionized.

This is not Hostess’s first time dealing with bankruptcy. In 2004, the company formerly known as Interstate Bakeries went bankrupt and re-emerged as Hostess Brands in 2009.

Once a workplace is unionized it is nearly impossible for employees to decertify a union. As a result, millions of unionized employees work in union shops where they have never had the opportunity to vote on whether or not they want to remain represented by that union.

The Employee Rights Act requires that every unionized workplace have a supervised secret ballot election every three years to determine whether employees want to continue to be represented by any incumbent union.

You can read more about the Employee Rights Act at www.Employee Rights Act.com or you can join our new Facebook page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s been more than 50 years since Congress overhauled America’s labor laws. During the following decades we’ve witnessed a workplace revolution that has fostered innovation, opportunity, and flexibility for America’s 150 million member strong workforce. Despite this, labor union leaders continue to cling to outdated labor laws that stifle job creation and trample employee rights.

You can read more about the Employee Rights Act at www.Employee Rights Act.com or you can join our new Facebook page.

Well, they’re at it again. In a new report called, “The Teaching Penalty: An Update Through 2010,” three EcPI economists claim that public school teachers suffer a 12 percent wage penalty compared to similarly educated workers in the private sector.

But just how similar are private sector employees to their public sector counterparts?

A JOB FOR LIFE

As the chart above demonstrates, state and local public sector workers enjoy a layoff/discharge rate that’s almost three times lower than the private sector.

That’s especially true with public school teachers, most of whom receive “tenure”—a virtual guarantee of life-time employment—after only a few years on the job. Among tenured teachers—even below-average tenured teachers—the chances of losing your job are less than 2 percent nationally. In some states the firing rate is less than 1 percent.

Contrast that to the private sector, where bigger risks and bigger rewards exist. In the private sector, you’re not just promoted based on how many years you’ve worked, or how many obligatory degrees you’ve earned—you’re promoted (and paid) based on hard work and ability. If you don’t perform, you’re at risk of losing your job.

If union supporters want to see equal paychecks, they need to be willing to accept judgment systems where pay equals performance and where the risk of losing your job for failing to perform is real. (Of course, they’re not willing to accept anything of the sort).

A BETTER COMPARISON GROUP

Since comparing teachers to everyone in the private sector is broad and misleading, a more appropriate comparison would be people who do a similar job in the private sector—namely, private school teachers. The US Department of Education collects such data, and it’s available for school years as recent as 2007-08.

The chart at right (courtesy of AEI’s Mark Perry) demonstrates that private school teachers with an equivalent level of education earn considerably less than their public-sector counterparts. To take one example from Perry’s post, a public school teacher with one year or less of experience makes the same amount as a private school teacher with 25 to 29 years of experience.

In separate results available on Perry’s blog, he shows that the private-sector “penalty” holds up across education level as well.

What’s the bottom line? Our belief is that good teachers are generally underpaid for the value of their skill and their impact on society. But we’ll never get to the point where there is consensus on that idea until it is possible to remove those teachers who should not be in the classroom.

And when a research group that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from teachers unions tells you that the teachers in those unions are underpaid—and suggests that they need to be paid more, regardless of performance—it should be taken with at least a small grain of salt.

Specifically, the senators vowed to oppose the nominations of the board’s Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and board member Craig Becker, a former attorney who has represented both the AFL-CIO and Service Workers International Union (SEIU), who we’ve written about before.

For a hint at just how frustrated the 41 senators are, here’s a bit more of the letter sent by them to President Obama:

The Senate has been unacceptably denied the ability to exercise its constitutional duty of advice and consent in regards to the NLRB.

In light of the NLRB’s recent actions that would have a deleterious effect on job creation and economic opportunity across the country, it is time to hold the NLRB accountable.

We urge you to withdraw both Mr. Solomon’s and Mr. Becker’s nominations to their respective positions immediately.

If not, we will vigorously oppose both nominations, vote against cloture and use all procedural tools available to defeat their confirmation in the Senate. …

Is this move against Boeing what President Obama meant when he told the AFL-CIO in August 2010 that he was going to “restore some balance” to the NLRB and make it easier for workers in the aerospace industry to unionize? It certainly seems that way.

Image courtesy of: vgm8383