10/21/21 - Kellogg Strike Hits Two-Week Mark

Union workers at Kellogg plants have been on the picket line for two weeks and workers have no plans to move.

(MLive) - In 2020, no agreement was met for the master contract. The union says it came down to one word: terminate or expire. Kellogg disputes this claim.

When contract negotiation was extended an extra year, union members started to save money and prepare for a fight. At midnight on Oct. 5, the master contract for Kellogg’s union workers expired and a massive walkout took place across four states.

Animosity between the union and Kellogg is said to have been brewing for years, but the pandemic was a tipping point, workers said. Walkouts at Nabisco and Frito-Lay mirrored discussions on work-life balance as a working condition.

Cereal makers became essential workers in 2020, but that hero status didn’t carry into to 2021. The Battle Creek plant may be a microcosm of labor force dynamics changing as a labor shortage puts spotlight on lean operations and worker burnout.

Union membership in Michigan is growing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15.2% of Michigan’s wage and salary workers were union members in 2020, up from 13.6% in 2019.

Around 1,400 union Kellogg workers from Michigan, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Nebraska are on strike. At the heart of the disagreement is a two-tier pay system. Kellogg’s workers are split between “legacy” and “transitional” workers with a wage gap of more than $10 an hour between them.

Transitional workers lose out on a pension, additional paid holidays and health care coverage, said Lisa Gregory, International Representative for the Bakery Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM).

Kellogg spokesperson Kris Bahner told MLive the company is proposing a new wage progression for employees and removing the two-tiered hiring structure. Over a proposed 6-year wage progression, the transitional employees would achieve a wage rate of about $35 per hour.