SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
kelloggs
'Kellogg's On Strrr-ike': 1,400 Workers Walk Off Job to Protect Benefits
"For more than a year throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Kellogg workers around the country have been working long, hard hours, day in and day out, to produce Kellogg ready-to-eat cereals for American families," Shelton said in a statement.
"The company continues to threaten to send additional jobs to Mexico if workers do not accept outrageous proposals that take away protections that workers have had for decades."
Daniel Osborn, president of Local 50G in Omaha, told the Associated Press that as the coronavirus knocked people out of work, remaining employees were often forced to put in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.
"Kellogg's response to these loyal, hardworking employees," Shelton said, "has been to demand these workers give up quality healthcare, retirement benefits, and holiday and vacation pay."
According to Shelton, "The company continues to threaten to send additional jobs to Mexico if workers do not accept outrageous proposals that take away protections that workers have had for decades."
Last month, the Kellogg Company announced its plan to slash more than 200 jobs at its Battle Creek plant over the next two years.
Kellogg is also trying to institute a two-tier employment system in which "new hires will make less money, have higher health insurance payments, and will not earn a pension," according to the union, which characterized the company's proposal as a divide-and-conquer strategy that asks "the current workforce to sell out the next generation of Kellogg workers."
"Kellogg is making these demands," Shelton continued, "as they rake in record profits, without regard for the well-being of the hardworking men and women who make the products that have created the company's massive profits."
Shelton added that BCTGM is "proud of our Kellogg members for taking a strong stand against this company's greed and we will support them for as long as it takes to force Kellogg to negotiate a fair contract that rewards them for their hard work and dedication and protects the future of all Kellogg workers."
Citing Osborn, AP reported that the Kellogg Company, which said it is "implementing contingency plans," is expected to "try to bring non-union workers into the plants at some point this week to try to resume operations and maintain the supply of its products."
While BCTGM has not officially called for a boycott, a union spokesperson reportedly told HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson that "supporters and consumers could certainly support the Kellogg workers and their fight for a fair contract by choosing NOT to buy Kellogg cereals while the strike is ongoing."
On Twitter, the union shared a link where supporters can contribute to strike funds.
The strike against Kellogg started just one day after nearly 99% of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), a 60,000-member union of film and television production crews, voted to go on strike if studios don't agree to a fair deal for the industry's lowest-paid workers.
Both actions could be early signs of a potential surge in worker organizing, as AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler noted.
The Guardian reported last week that "tens of thousands of workers around the U.S. could go on strike in the coming weeks in what would be the largest wave of labor unrest since a series of teacher strikes in 2018 and 2019, which won major victories and gave the American labor movement a significant boost."
Kellogg's workers aren't the first BCTGM members to strike during the pandemic.
Related Content
Nabisco Strike Ends After Union Members Approve New Contract
In July, aound 600 workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas walked off the job to fight against forced overtime hours, low pay, and other conditions that BCTGM Local 218 members deemed unacceptable.
In August, hundreds of BCTGM members working at Nabisco plants in multiple states went on strike to demand better working conditions and to protest the foreign outsourcing plans of Mondelez International, the snack maker's parent company.
Both strikes ended with workers ratifying new collective bargaining agreements.
Oxfam: World's Largest Food Companies Creating Legacy of Destruction
According to Oxfam, these "Big 10"--that together generate $1 billion-a-day in profit--are failing millions of people in developing countries who supply land, labor, water and commodities needed to make their products.
"It's time these companies take more responsibility for their immense influence on poor people's lives," said Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director for Oxfam International. "Eighty percent of the world's hungry people work in food production and these companies employ millions of people in developing countries to grow their ingredients. They control hundreds of the world's most popular brands and have the economic, social and political clout to make a real and lasting difference to the world's poor and hungry."
As The Guardian reports:
The charity's Behind the Brands report compiled a scorecard, rating the "big 10" food companies in seven categories: the transparency of their supply chains and operations, how they ensure the rights of workers, how they protect women's rights, the management of water and land use, their policies to reduce the impacts of climate change and how they ensure the rights of the farmers who grow their ingredients.
The company with the lowest score - just 13 out of 70 - was ABF. It scored just one mark out of 10 in its treatment of land, women and climate change, while the highest scores it managed to achieve was three out of 10, in relation to workers and transparency.
In joint second-lowest place were Kellogg's and General Mills, which owns Old El Paso, Haagen-Dazs and Nature Valley, with both scoring 16 out of 70.
In the campaign's first targeted action, Oxfam will target Nestle, Mondelez and Mars for their failure to address inequality faced by women who grow cocoa for their chocolate products. As part of that effort, the group released a series with first-hand accounts which explore the inequality that women cocoa growers face. And the campaign is urging people to use their own voices and social networks to speak out against the food giants.
"No brand is too big to listen to its customers," said Hobbs. "If enough people urge the big food companies to do what is right, they have no choice but to listen. By contacting companies on Twitter and Facebook, or signing a petition to their CEO, consumers can do their part to help bring lasting change in our broken food system by showing companies their customers expect them to operate responsibly."
The 'Behind the Brands' campaign also released this list of ways that the "Big 10" fail to meet their commitments:
- While some of the "Big 10" have publicly committed to women's rights, none have committed to eliminating discrimination against women throughout their supply chains.
- None of the companies have adequate policies to protect local communities from land and water grabs, despite all of them sourcing commodities plagued by land rights violations, such as palm oil, soy and sugar. Not one company has declared 'zero tolerance' against land grabs in their supply chains.
- All ten companies are overly secretive about their agricultural supply chains, making their claims of 'sustainability' and 'social responsibility' difficult to verify. Nestle and Unilever are most open about the countries they source from, but no company is providing enough information about their suppliers.
- Companies are generally increasing their overall water efficiency but most have failed to put policies in place to limit their impact on local water sources. Only Pepsi has publicly recognized water as a human right and committed to consult local communities. Nestle has developed guidelines for its suppliers to manage water and was ranked top for policies on water.
- All of the companies have taken steps to reduce direct emissions, but only five - Mondelez, Danone, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Mars - publicly report on agricultural emissions associated with their products. Unilever alone has committed to halve its greenhouse gas footprint by 2020. None have yet developed policies to help farmers in their supply chains to build resilience to climate change.
- None have publicly committed to pay a fair price to farmers or fair business arrangements with them across all agricultural operations. Only Unilever - which is top-ranked for its dealings with small-scale farmers - has specific supplier guidelines to address some key issues faced by farmers.
___________________________________________
Most Popular