By Grace Bellinghausen, Reporter
Kellogg’s workers union has been on strike for the past 3 weeks at their plants in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and at their largest plant here in Omaha. The strike is in response to a new contract that employees are saying is unreasonable.
The Kellogg’s building on 84th and J St. is the largest cold food manufacturing plant in North America. Day and night, six days a week, this has been the scene outside the various gates. Employees say they’re longtime workers and just want treatment and pay that’s fair.
“There’s 1400 of us with Kellogg’s and we need to stick together to see this through,” said unionized Kellogg’s employee Stephanie Sterling. “We’re here so we can all have better paying jobs for the future and for the young people coming in.”
Both Republicans and Democrats have supported the workers plea for fair wages. A poll by Enodo Global says 73 percent of Americans agree with Kellogg’s workers strike. However, Kellogg’s remains unwilling to budge.
The effort to secure fair wages has sparked a community effort in Omaha; firefighters, bikers and other Omaha union organizations have joined in the effort. The goal is to preserve the middle class, a group that has long been declining at the hands of the mega-rich.
The company is making record profits, making 21 billion dollars in 2020. Due to this, executives have taken a 20 percent increase in compensation, while plant workers’ pay increase wasn’t even enough to counteract inflation. Kellogg’s also wants to get rid of its two tier system for wages.
“It’s eventually going to take all of the employees and put them down into a lower tier so all employees will be making 12 dollars an hour less” said the union president Dan Osborne. “Their insurance premiums will go up, they’ll take less vacation time and less vacation pay.”
Around 70 percent of workers are in tier two and would be affected by the new pay scale; they remain hopeful that Kellogg’s will reach an agreement if they keep up the pressure.
The Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ (BCTGM) union spokesperson said the community can help by not purchasing Kellogg cereals while the strike is ongoing.
