Kellogg Co. Trying to Persuade its 1,400 Union Members to Negotiate

The Battle Creek, Michigan-based cereal maker is asking its striking workers to come back to the bargaining table.

The Kellogg Co. is asking its 1,400 striking cereal-making workers to return to the bargaining table. The cereal giant is calling on the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union to resume negotiations and said it’s willing to consider new proposals as the strike is poised to enter into its fourth week.

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The company says it’s willing to discuss the two-tier employment system that separates between “transitional” and “legacy” workers. Changes to that system have been a major sticking point for union workers. Kellogg workers have been on strike since October 5, 2021.

We have a responsibility to these employees — which is to engage in good faith bargaining toward a replacement agreement that gets them back to work, the company said.

Head of the local Omaha, Nebraska Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union chapter Dan Osborn says he believes the union is ready to return to the bargaining table if Kellogg's is serious about negotiating the two-tiered wage system.

I’m hoping we can get back to the table and get a contract,” Osborn said. “People just want to go back to work.

 

The strike covers four plants;  Memphis, Tennessee, Omaha, Nebraska, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Battle Creek, Michigan. Despite the offer to return to the bargaining table, the company has resumed production at all four cereal plants with outside workers and salaried employees.

Our biggest piece of this fight is really about the future people and then obviously some job security to go along with it,” said Trevor Bidelman, the president of the union’s local chapter in Battle Creek. “The company really is going to have to understand and grasp that whoever comes here working after I do is going to have a better package than I have. It’s going to have to progressively move forward throughout time. We are not going to accept something where somebody that starts working here 10 years down the road has less than what I have.

Kellogg’s workers say many of them have been putting in 12-hour shifts on a routine basis to keep the plants operating during the pandemic.