28 Oct BCTGM Calls on Kellogg to Unlock the Gates, Let the Workers Go to Work

On Monday, October 28, BCTGM International Union President David B. Durkee issued the following statement regarding the lockout of BCTGM Local 252G members by Kellogg in Memphis, Tenn.:

“The work stoppage at Kellogg’s Memphis plant is not a strike by workers who are demanding more from the company.  Kellogg’s employees, most of whom have given decades of dedicated service to the company, want to work but have been locked out of their jobs by a company demanding that they take less.  Kellogg is a highly-profitable, $14 billion food company whose very success depends on middle-class families buying its products.  Yet in these negotiations with the Memphis local of the BCTGM, Kellogg’s demands – if they were ever accepted – would convert good, middle-class Memphis jobs to jobs for the working poor.

“Like so many companies that depend on American consumers to buy their products, Kellogg’s short-sighted demands, if successful, would continue the erosion of the middle class – the back bone of the Memphis and American economies.  Moreover, Kellogg has chosen to lock out its workers over issues that always have been a part of national – not local – negotiations. Kellogg’s lockout proposal, if adopted, would effectively replace every significant term negotiated in the national agreements – wages, hours, benefits and scheduling – and would make irrelevant the national agreement that the union entered into in good faith.

“Since this lockout began, the workers and the BCTGM have asked one simple question, ‘Why Memphis?’ We call on Kellogg to end this lockout, open the gates and let your workers, our members, go back to their middle-class jobs so they can continue supporting their families and producing high-quality cereal products for American families as they have for decades.”

Check out the  FACT SHEET on the lockout of Kellogg workers in Memphis!