Biden Condemns Kellogg’s Threat to Fire Strikers

Biden may not walk the proverbial walk that often, but in his statement of support for strikers at Kellogg’s plants across the nation, he is walking the walk now, and not “both-siding” the issue, as I am sure his former boss would:

President Biden on Friday waded into a strike involving 1,400 employees at four Kellogg plants, whom the company said it planned to permanently replace after workers voted down a proposed contract this week.

“I am deeply troubled by reports of Kellogg’s plans to permanently replace striking workers,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that “permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”

The strike began on Oct. 5 and has largely focused on the company’s two-tier compensation system, in which employees hired after 2015 typically receive lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. Many veteran Kellogg workers, who the company says earn about $35 per hour on average, believe that adding lower-paid workers puts downward pressure on their wages.

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On Tuesday, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which represents the workers, said its members had “overwhelmingly voted” against the deal. In response to the result, Kellogg said that it would “hire permanent replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers.”

Noyce!

This is a good move, but even better is the fact that that Redditors have taken to spamming the Kellogg’s scab application website, taking the page down:

Reddit users are flooding the Kellogg Company’s job portal with fake applications after the company recently announced it will replace its striking union workers with new permanent employees. The spammers say they stand in solidarity with the strikers.

In a Reddit post in the r/antiwork subreddit, one user by the name of ‘BloominFunions’ listed the job portal sites for the four hiring plants, encouraging users to apply for the listings in hopes of clogging the system with fabricated applications.

As of Friday, the Reddit post has been upvoted more than 62,000 times.

“It’s time to clog their toilet of an application pipeline,” the user wrote. “This is your chance to apply for your ‘dream’ job.”

In descriptions of the job listings posted, Kellogg specifically notes that prospective workers would be hired to fill positions from employees on strike.

To quote Aesop, “In union there is strength.”