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Kellogg Permanently Replacing 1,400 Workers After Union Rejects Offer
- Thread starter Xterrian
- Start date
lmao
where the fuck do they think they are gonna find 1400 employees during a covid resurgence and a labor shortage
where the fuck do they think they are gonna find 1400 employees during a covid resurgence and a labor shortage
Yup and companies just aren't interested AT ALL in employee retention or happiness. Hiring and training new employees is expensive and foolish as hell. But they are stuck in a mentality that everyone should kiss their feet and be so thankful they were granted the glory of working for them, and imagine they have a never ending supply of eager workers.
Good luck fuck heads.
It's basically abuse. A human shouldn't have to work 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week, and shouldn't be allowed to unless it's a National Emergency or something to that affect. One offs, not the routine. It's exploitative.
Pay your workers Kelloggs!
Good buy for now Rice Krispies and the like.
When employees strike, companies fill their positions with temporary workers. These people are frequently called "scabs". When the Union turned down Kellogg's offer, they basically threw a switch and made all the temps full time employees. The people on strike no longer have jobs to go back to. Their positions have been filled by the temporary workers who are now happy as shit to have high paying full time employment. Well, for now at least!
I am just amazed that even Temp Agencies have that many people to throw around on a whim right now
Exploiting people's "fuck you, got mine" mentality works more often than it should.
Is this going to make those folks on strike angry at the union? I'm just wondering if this increases anti union sentiment. Like "I trusted you and now I've lost my job" type of stuff
FYI, Kelloggs is not replacing 1400 jobs at a single location. Here in Battle Creek, I think it is 141 jobs? The 1400 total jobs are across many plants in many different states/cities.
I mean in this case it seems not anymore. To be clear this is fucked up and companies have too much power. I just worry if this will be used for anti union propaganda.
It just depends how much backing the union had from the workers for the offer they put on the table. If most of the work force agreed that "if managment refuses, we hold the line", then the union is just enacting the will of the workers. If most of the workers however were like "if management refuses, we would rather not lose our jobs, be flexible", and the union still holds the line, then yeah, the union working against the will of the workers can certaintly deteriorate support. The latter is pretty unlikely/uncommon though.
Ah ok I was thinking this was like the Hollywood union where there was a sub committee representing/voting the union as a whole
Just looked up Captain Crunch, since I bought a box yesterday. Not part of Kelloggs, so not throwing it in the trash and will continue to buy
Not if they've been on strike like the other union workers. Kelloggs would just reject them at this point
Nope. Seems like the tenured workers and the newer ones held the line together to help each other.
Love the solidarity.
I have actual experience with something adjacent to this.
Many many years ago I was the night manager at a grocery store in Arkansas called Harvest Foods. Well, Harvest Foods went bankrupt. The union rep floated in and out of our location and he was so fucking clueless that it pissed me off. He was basically asking *me* wtf was going on and I was like "You're the one who should be telling us wtf is going on". The experience was so bad that I have empathy for anti union people. I don't agree with them mind you, but my experience is like "yeah, I get why some people shit on unions". We had people that had worked there 30+ years and paid their union dues out of every paycheck. When the shit hit the fan they were all left with their dicks in their hands. The last month or so we were open, the union guys just stopped coming lol. It was a shitshow. This was back in...1997 I want to say?
On topic, I'm sure the locals are not happy with the way things turned out but I am unsure if they will turn on their Union reps. I'm sure some will!
The article mentions that the union contract had a cap on the number of lower tenure workers the company could employ, and that this was the sticking point in the negotiation. So it may be that this was preventing them from hiring more workers and reducing OT.
You might be thinking "why would union members want 30 hours of OT?" But as you said, it increases both average and total hourly wages significantly. And there are people with the attitude that it is better to work long hours when you are young and retire early.
Btw, Kellogs is the one talking shit about temporary workers filling all the positions, I would take their word with a grain of salt.
The math for them to staff up into the thousands seems bogus to me, its probably a percentage at best
The math for them to staff up into the thousands seems bogus to me, its probably a percentage at best
People don't want less than a living wage and companies won't budge on salary. So no one is working.
They are unionized so they are very likely making $20-30+ at least.
Still, Very sad to see this.
Makes sense. Unions aren't that strong nowadays and they can be squeezed really easily because a lot of people participating and making decisions in the unions are long term employees who want to keep things well enough until they retire. A good example is the Canadian Postal workers. Their contract was done this year or so. They voted yes to extend it because of the pandemic. Just think how badly they could have squeezed their employer and the government for raises, QOL, benefits, etc but they overwhelmingly voted yes to an extension. All I can theorize is a lot of the members have been there for a while and do not want to rock the boat.
It makes sense, though, because what are these low skilled laborers supposed to do if shit hits the fan? They already make decent wages (I think around 25-30 Canadian an hour -- which is extremely laughable in today's standards), and everywhere else for the same requirements pays way, way less and probably require more work and less job permanence.
You also have that corporations can just replace you especially if you work in a factory. I can totally believe Kellogg hiring new people because the pay already is pretty good considering other jobs of similar skill.
Outside of some very strong government regulations and it embedded into the culture and society, unions may just die out in various places around the world. People, especially low income low wage jobs, don't have as much bargaining power as you think cause, again, there is something else ready to take that job.
It makes sense, though, because what are these low skilled laborers supposed to do if shit hits the fan? They already make decent wages (I think around 25-30 Canadian an hour -- which is extremely laughable in today's standards), and everywhere else for the same requirements pays way, way less and probably require more work and less job permanence.
You also have that corporations can just replace you especially if you work in a factory. I can totally believe Kellogg hiring new people because the pay already is pretty good considering other jobs of similar skill.
Outside of some very strong government regulations and it embedded into the culture and society, unions may just die out in various places around the world. People, especially low income low wage jobs, don't have as much bargaining power as you think cause, again, there is something else ready to take that job.
I feel sorry for the workers but this is going to be an interesting test case if Kellogg can truly replace 1400 workers at "low cost" right now.
And this is where things get sticky.
I had another job at a factory around 1994 (guys, I had a lot of jobs when I was younger). We assembled push/pull cables for cars/trucks/ect. I was hired directly in, but virtually everyone else had to get in through a temp agency. The stage is set, now onto my story.
My line (218!) rocked. We were all young dudes around 18-19 and we broke every record our line ever had. Each of the 5 positions had to run like a well oiled machine with the operators giving 100% the entire shift. It was no joke and we killed it. We slaughtered 8/10/12 hour records. Our output was so good that at one point corporate sent an engineer to watch us doing our job over the course of a week. I asked the dude what he was doing and he told me that we were outputting more than 3x what the line was designed for so the powers that be were concerned we were somehow cutting corners. We weren't. We were just awesome.
ANYWAY! At the end of your 8hr shift, a manager could walk up and say "Your line is on mandatory OT tonight". Just like that. No warning. It could be 5 minutes before it was time to clock out. It sucked, but that isn't my point. When we would get a temporary employee on our line, they had to step the fuck up to our level, and they did. But when OT is on the line, thanks to the Union, a full time employee could "bump" any temp and take their spot. Seems good on paper for the full time employee right? Except we would now get a lifelong factory rat on the 2nd station that would go at a snail's pace because he didn't give 2 shits about his job. All the parts would build up in front of him and the other 3 positions would sit on our hands waiting for parts. Then the next day we would have to bleed through all the parts that built up the night before thanks to some lazy piece of shit. This happened all the time and I never understood why they bothered giving us OT if the end result was a significant decrease in output while we were getting paid time and a half. The answer was because of the Union.
Btw, our reward for shattering all those records? The powers that be set up tripods and recorded us doing our jobs for an entire shift. It was pretty cool! Until they later told us that they were recording training footage because our entire line was getting broken down and shipped to Mexico. LOL true story! I moved down to Arkansas before I got to see it go, but goddamn what a kick in the teeth that was.
Sounds like you worked yourself into a shoot trying to shuffle for the man. The data of how much harder you guys were working was no doubt thrown at other people as to how much of a bad job they were doing.
We got profit sharing and bonuses based on our output. Those full time employees from other lines took money out of my pocket.
I love this comment because it looks so strongly pro-capitalism and praising work ethic, all to have the jobs shipped out of country at the end anyway. Capitalism, folks!
But in the end the whole job got rubbed out because you proved that a little grit and gristle could get the job done 3 times better if you just put a little elbow to the wheel. So that was videod and recorded and now there is no money going that way at all.
I wonder how much blowback there is among non-union workers. I know some salary workers at John Deere that are leaving Deere (after their bonus check clears) because of how Deere treated them and the union workers during their recent strike.
Only 3% of the plant workers could move up in wage each year that is FUCKED.
I checked the list. We don't buy Kellog's brands and it will remain that way.
I checked the list. We don't buy Kellog's brands and it will remain that way.
Same. Hope these workers will land on their feet somewhere that respects them.
The point was to avoid the company diluting the possible union pool by hiring only lower tier workers
Step the fuck up bro to our level of working our ass off all day and still doing last minute mandatory overtime! Once the suits see this is possible that we can smash those lousy records if we work like slaves, we will all be out on our asses! Lets get some brews and wonder how bad the Mexicans have it now, watching our productivity videos contrasting our work number machismo with daily wage and what is expected of them, not adjusted for inflation or exchange! Wild times but you are only young once.
They just built another line in its place. No one lost their job. Look, I know you really want to make it look bad that working hard for a company is all for nothing, but in my case you have no idea what you're talking about. All employees knew the drill. Increase output = profit sharing and bonuses. I was there to make money and I did exactly that.
My life lesson from that job is that sometimes you need to work a job in order to figure out what you never want to do again the rest of your life. For me, that was factory work! I somehow made it 8 months there. Still, it was a good life experience for what it was.
Another good point. When we hit certain goals, we were guaranteed no weekend OT. So when lazy lifer got on our line, we had an increased chance of working the weekend because of that dolt.
I dont want to make it seem like anything. You said :
Btw, our reward for shattering all those records? The powers that be set up tripods and recorded us doing our jobs for an entire shift. It was pretty cool! Until they later told us that they were recording training footage because our entire line was getting broken down and shipped to Mexico. LOL true story! I moved down to Arkansas before I got to see it go, but goddamn what a kick in the teeth that was.
please keep us privy to which cereals you do and do not purchase.
I just had pride in our line and what we did. Of course I was disappointed to hear the line was leaving. But at the end of the day it's just a manufacturing line in a Japanese Company operating several factories around the world.
Thanks for the context. Looks like Kellogg's is one of the few well-paying factory jobs left (OT aside obviously).
I dont think there is anything wrong in your achievements as a line and it is obviously still a point of pride but like....
So the point of going 3 times over the set targets is what? So the reward is that they wont pull mandatory weekend OT on you? Something they really shouldnt do anyway. And the fact that your "line" can do it and others cant is not getting flown in other "lines" faces? But how does that help anyone working except your group? To get one over on them? And so the mission was to outclass everyone else so that you guys would look fantastic? Then that model was so good it was getting recorded by the bosses. To what end, do you reckon?
And then a union "lifer" who wanted to work to rule would be a drag? Because he wanted to work to what he was contracted for and not what the bosses wanted, which was to work everyone into the grave. And then at the end of it all, it all got sold south of the border anyway shortly after. The Japanese? company you mentioned that worked it all out I am sure took it all down to spreadsheet numbers and time in motion type shit and came to that conclusion. Living in Japan, that kind of even makes more sense.
There is nothing wrong with being proud of the work done, I am absolutely sure you worked very hard and did a fantastic job. Don't mean to denigrate that at all. Just the "whys" and "wherefores" etc.
You're coming off as real passive aggressive and it's rustling my jimmies. You are looking at my story through a skewed perspective and applying nuances and details to it that simply did not exist. I don't really want to point/counterpoint with you all day about my life experience and the story I shared. It would be different if we were having a face to face conversation but typing it all out and explaining why your assumptions are entirely off base is...not fun. This was almost 30 years ago for crying out loud lol
I stopped buying Kelloggs when I learned about the strike a couple months ago, and I will continue to not purchase a single product from them (and their many sub brands). We were a 2 box a week cereal family and most of the time it was a Kellogg's brand.