Who killed the Twinkie?

Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn said it was unions.

But the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union says that the company would have died years ago if it hadn't been for workers.

"...the truth is that had it not been for the valiant efforts of our members over the last eight years, including accepting significant wage and benefit concessions after the first bankruptcy, this company would have gone out of business long ago," BCTGM International President Frank Hurt said in a statement emailed late Friday to media members.

“Hostess failed because its six management teams over the last eight years were unable to make it a profitable, successful business enterprise.

The full statement has since been posted to Facebook; you can read it here.

Hurt adds that a bankruptcy plan submitted by the company earlier this year was deemed unreasonable by a company-hired consultant because it would have done little to reduce debt while pinching workers, and called out Hostess executives' compensation.

We also phoned the Port Chester, NY chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union to hear their side.

We reached a business agent — someone who represents union members — for the chapter (Local 69) who only identified himself as Nicholas because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the union.

He said he had no regrets about Hostess' announcement this morning that it would liquidate, and that the union's strike did not backfire.

"Hostess is a corrupt company," he said, "and is attempting to shut their plant down because we are not willing to conform and take slave wages. We won't do that."

He said the company had cycled through several CEOs in recent years — a sign, he said, that "they're not bakers any more.

"They're a big business who's mismanaged the company and made all of us suffer."

The compensation the company was offering its workers was something they were no longer able to live with, he said.

"We've been in situations like this, where Wall Street, big business investors will attempt to chop up wages and have workers work for little or nothing, where they're unable to support their families," he said.

"When they have to take action to close the plant, that happens. We have families that cannot work for these types of wages and have little to no healthcare."

He said thousands of workers at Local 69 would be affected.

"We'll attempt to get them into other places," he said.