Hostess Brands, the baking company known for sweet treats like Twinkies and Ding Dongs, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, just three years after emerging from an earlier restructuring process. The company, which has assets of roughly $1 billion, has been struggling under the weight of a debt load of about $860 million and soaring expenses tied to its labor force. Hostess has up to 100,000 creditors, and its chief unsecured creditors are labor unions and pension funds that represent the company's employees, according to the Chapter 11 petition filed in United States Bankruptcy Court in lower Manhattan. "We remain hopeful that we can reach an agreement that will allow us to amend our labor contracts so that we can emerge from Chapter 11 as a highly competitive company that provides secure jobs for our employees," the company's president and chief executive, Brian J. Driscoll, said in a statement. The statement added that Hostess did not anticipate disruptions to its normal sale of baked goods. "With generations of loyal consumers, numerous iconic products and a talented and experienced workforce, Hostess Brands has tremendous inherent strengths to build upon," Mr. Driscoll said. Hostess, a privately held company based in Irving, Tex., has built an expansive list of products over the decades. But in 2004, confronted with escalating labor costs and fluctuating prices of flour and other ingredients, the company filed for Chapter 11. Hostess, then known as the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, completed the restructuring process in February 2009, when Ripplewood Holdings, a New York private equity firm, seized control. Founded in 1930, the company faces similar troubles today. While it recorded net revenue of about $2.5 billion in the fiscal year ended May 28, 2011, it posted a $341 million net loss. Burdensome debt and labor costs prompted the company's decline, according to bankruptcy court documents. About 80 percent of the company's 19,000 employees belong to a dozen separate unions, most notably the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, Mr. Driscoll explained in an affidavit attached to the bankruptcy filing. In particular, the company said pension and medical benefits costs as well as "restrictive work rules" were eating into profit. The company paid about $52 million in workers" compensation claims in the fiscal year ended May 28, 2011, the affidavit said. But competitors, Mr. Driscoll said, "employ work forces that are not unionized or only partially unionized, which allow them to operate with significantly less burdensome operating restrictions and overall cost structures." For Hostess to achieve long-term viability, he said, it must "achieve dramatic change to their labor agreements." Mr. Driscoll outlined plans to overhaul the company, with an eye toward ultimately breaking free of the bankruptcy process. The company, he said, aims to reduce its heavy debt load, obtain new capital investments to update its production and withdraw completely from multiemployer pension plans to "achieve relief from the crippling costs of these plans." "With these changes, we can access capital to reinvest in our company again and begin to level the playing field with our competitors," he said in the company statement. For now, Hostess has secured bankruptcy financing of up to $75 million from a group of lenders led by Silver Point Finance, according to the filing. That will allow the company to continue operating its bakeries and 570 bakery outlet stores.