Scabs hired through an Ohio union-busting firm now produce Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops.

[phantom power]

"union-busting firm" -- so now union busting is an entire business model?

During local contract negotiations in October 2013, Kellogg demanded the right to hire more part-time and casual employees, at lower pay rates. When workers voted the proposal down, Kellogg locked them out.

Scabs hired through an Ohio union-busting firm now produce Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops.

...

Bradshaw says the lockout is part of a plan to make Kellogg union-free. “If we win in Memphis, they have to wait until the master contract expires to make these changes,” he said. “If we lose in Memphis, it’s going everywhere.

“Other companies are going to see it. General Mills has already called our international president and said, ‘What are you doing about Kellogg?’ He’s thinking if Kellogg can do it, they can, too.”

The Memphis lockout is only the latest step in a series of increasingly hostile anti-union moves by Kellogg globally. Management recently announced that two union plants in Australia and Canada will close this year, and production will move to non-union facilities.

Kellogg also recently shifted 58 million pounds per year of cereal production from Memphis to Mexico. Bradshaw said workers in Mexico are required to live in a housing compound near the factory and are bused to work. Some have been kidnapped by drug cartels.

In 1996, more than 800 people worked at the Memphis facility. Now it stands just above 200. Much of the work is automated.

http://labornotes.org/2014/01/kelloggs-delivers-memphis-slap-face

[theHandpuppet]

1. Thanks for posting this

Kelloggs will immediately go on my "no buy" list.

[mindwalker_i]

2. Why do they need to do this?

Froot Loops seem to reproduce themselves (#HouseOfReps).

[joeglow3]

3. Honestly, I am hesitant to care about this

I know I should. However, I had a bad experience with kellog.

There is a plant here in Omaha and I wanted to get a summer job while in college. You worked about 60 hours a week, but made GREAT money. Myself and a couple friends applied for jobs and no one even received a call. However, a lady on our dorm floor got a job there. Her father was a union member there and she told us the only people who got summer jobs there were relatives of union members.

While I know we need more unions to ensure the middle class' survival, this still pissed me off. I see this no differently than I do the rich elite stacking the deck to ensure they and their families can keep their wealth and no one else can attain it. These people stacked the deck to make sure only they and their families could get a good job and they shut out anyone else from even interviewing for a job.

[haele]

7. I've heard that sometimes that happens in open-shop states, because of free riders.

I've not experienced that so much with local union shops in my business (shipyard repair), because the non-union free riders under a union contract still have to pay a minimum amount into a worker's legal benefit "pot" to pay for the union negotiations that are made for them in most shops. And believe me, union contracts pay way better, even as they've become more toothless, than what the going rate the developers and contractors want to give their workforce.
The local developers keep trying to get rid of a clause that any work on public contracts has to be compensatory to union scale with a workforce certified to be at union skill level.

The city doesn't want the local billionaire development corporation getting a contract and using minimally supervised day labor to do the assumed to be simple hard labor jobs. There's a skill even to mundane tasks like digging trenches or painting, and people are regularly killed doing the simplest grunt work when they are just thrown at a job if they haven't gone through basic safety and have experienced supervision ensuring they are doing what is supposed to be done within regulations and to code.

I'm sorry you went through that with the local union when you did. But I can see that when there's a fight between unions and corporate management, the union will try to ensure that anyone being hired is going to join - which too often means they're only going to be looking at family or friends of family that can be "vouched" for. Not excusing it, because that's not fair to people who need jobs, but too often that's the explanation.

Yes, unions can be corrupt and looking after the union bosses. And entrenched. And in control of who gets the training, certification, and follow on jobs to advance in their trade.

But... it's far more common for businesses to weaken or bust unions when they can get more non-union workers who don't understand that the good pay, hours, and bennies that attracted them to the job in the first place is because of the union "that's just too corrupt and expensive and mean" - and end up diluting the power of collective bargaining and screwing themselves out of the good job they used to have. And then, they go and blame the union for not sticking up for them.

Haele

[Orsino]

18. Union-protected wages protect the rest of us, too. n/t

[JoeyT]

23. That's not really a union problem,

or at least not strictly a union problem. That's a factory problem. Non-union mills you pretty much have to either be related to or really good buddies with someone involved in the hiring process to get in. Almost anywhere with good wages that doesn't specifically prohibit feather bedding and rabidly enforce that prohibition has that issue. In my experience union mills/factories generally tend to have less people running around with the same last name (so to speak) in them.

[bvar22]

4. Solidarity

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."
--- Martin Luther King Jr.

Thank You Dr King,
but the History of the LABOR Movement is being edited from our text books,
and is no longer embraced and promoted by the leadership of the Democratic Party
except during elections.

"Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."
---Molly Ivins

"Every advance in this half-century: Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education... one after another- came with the support and leadership of American Labor."
---Jimmy Carter

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower

"Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those -- regardless of their political party -- who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

[Enthusiast]

5. Boycott Kellogg!

[MO_Moderate]

6. Frosted Flakes = Greatest cereal EVER!

Great with milk. Great over a casserole. Great over ice cream. Great over caramel apples. Great over chocolate covered bananas.
Yum

[kelliekat44]

8. Yuck!!

[siligut]

10. Frosted Flakes on a casserole?

At least you didn't mention chicken.

[MO_Moderate]

12. Hashbrown casserole

recipe calls for corn flakes - BORING
Use Frosted Flakes instead.

[siligut]

14. GMOs cause me GI trouble

But even if they didn't I would still boycott Kellogg's for shortsighted, selfish business practices.

[mokawanis]

11. That's your response to what Kellogg is doing to workers?

You see a post about working class people getting fucked over by a company and your only comment is that you like Frosted Flakes?

[MO_Moderate]

13. No, that's my opinion of Frosted Flakes

I LOVE, not like, Frosted Flakes.

Didn't mention anything about what is going on with the company.

[mokawanis]

16. Yeah, I got that

You love that shit, and that's all you have to say in response to a post about Kellogg fucking over employees. Thanks for your contribution.

[theHandpuppet]

26. Yeah, I was impressed, too

That was one way to derail the conversation, wasn't it. Now we can get back to the issue at hand.

I will boycott.

[LukeFL]

21. Yuck. Filled with sugar and GMO

Bad for kids who are overweight and suffering from many diseases

[okaawhatever]

9. It's official. I'm boycotting kellogg. Cheerios's has gone GMO free and has progressive ads. They'll

get my business.

[LukeFL]

22. Same here

[haele]

15. Wouldn't doubt it. There's firms to teach businesses how to hire H1Bs instead of US citizens.

Union Busting firms are common in open shop states. Who cares about the workers, corprations are people, too - and they just can't afford to be competitive and pay prevailing wages and benefits to a fungible work-force.

It's all to improve the corporate bottom line. Sad - union jobs were great for the average person - you know, 50% of working adults in the US - who used to be able to buy some sort of home and comfort, a vehicle, and maybe even send their kids to college and still be able to retire with some form of dignity on the wages, pensions, and benefits unions won for them.
Corporations and companies still did pretty dam' well - maybe not five super-yachts in foriegn ports, private planes, three mansions and a personal congressional lobbist for the chief executives type of "pretty dam' well", but well enough there could still be a lot of community movers and shakers, large-scale sponsorship of charity and public events, and summers on Martha's Vinyard for those captains of industry and their shareholders.

Any working person who thinks their little bit of stock in a hedge fund entitles them to be concerned about workers getting paid "too much" and pesky unions impacting the amount of return is only cutting his or her own throat in the long run.

Haele

[frwrfpos]

17. fuck these management parasites.

We need a world wide workers unionization push. This union busting shit disgusts me

[pampango]

19. K&R. Thanks for posting, phantom power. n/t

[Blue Owl]

20. Frosted Flakes will now be called Sugared Scabs

n/t

[bobGandolf]

24. Time to eliminate Kellogs.....

from my grocery list. It is the only way to change hostile anti-union behaviors.

[davidpdx]

25. Scabs

So that was what I found in my cereal this morning!

[dchill]

27. Piss on Kellogg...

Saves on milk.

[JHB]

28. No, union busting is not "now" a buiness model...

The current version of the business model -- law/PR firms specializing in breaking unions, not just negotiating with them -- has been going on since the 1970s.