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January 2, 2022
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
Workers at six different U.S. Amazon facilities staged wildcat walkouts in the days before Christmas. Though none of these were large or sustained, they constituted a sharp warning to Amazon management that the workforce is stirring and may wage much larger struggles in the near future.
Workers at four Staten Island sites struck at noon lunch hour Dec. 22 and held rallies. They slammed “unfair labor practices” and stated that "in light of the increasing severity of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Omicron variant, we are demanding the return of hazard pay and unlimited unpaid time off." In frigid temperatures, workers rallied in Times Square on Wednesday afternoon. They shared stories of working conditions and announced that their petition for a Union election had been refiled. Organizers distributed flyers promoting the walkout and gathered food to distribute to employees.
On the same day, in the morning, workers at two Amazon facilities in and near Chicago also held walkouts.
“We have been passed over for raises. We are being overworked, even when there is sufficient people to work here,” a worker at the DLN2 facility in Cicero, IL, said in a live stream posted by Amazonians United Chicagoland.
“We have not received the bonuses we were promised. There are people here who were hired as permanent workers, and then they took their badges away and made them temporary workers.... They are staffing this place unsafely, making people work too fast, even though we don’t have to....They took away five minutes from our breaks because supposedly the pandemic is over, and yet we got three cases yesterday," a worker said.
The Illinois workers, who work between 1:20 AM and 11:50 AM, are also demanding a $5 per hour raise. (1) The rally speaker said that https://www.the-sun.com/news/4328393/amazon-warehouse-workers-walkout-new-york-illinois/workers were told by management that whoever participates in the walkout “might as well leave their badges.” While it’s illegal to fire employees of private companies for staging a walkout, Amazon is well-known for retaliation. When workers returned after the strikes they found that their schedules were blank and they had been clocked out for the day, which seemed to indicate that they had been fired. Now that the NLRB has rendered a national decision against Amazon for such retaliation, it remains to be seen if Amazon will obey the decision. After all, it was already illegal and Amazon paid no attention to the law in the past. (2)
(1) Israel Salas-Rodriguez, “Dozens of Amazon warehouse workers talk out in protest to demand better treatment and higher wages during holiday rush”, The U.S. SUN, Dec. 23, 2021. And David Roeder, “Amazon workers stage brief walkouts at two Chicago-area sites”, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 22, 2021.
(2) Amanda Silberling, “Amazon workers at two Chicago warehouses walk out to demand better treatment”, TechCrunch, Dec. 22, 2021. <>
by Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
On December 21, 1400 striking Kellogg workers in four states, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTWGM), ended their nearly three-month strike after winning some improvements but not the abolition of the two-tier wage system or the elimination of overwhelming overtime that they had desired.
The workers had demanded equality between all workers, old and new. This meant abolition of the two-tier wage and benefit system, which gave high-seniority workers permanently and significantly better wages and benefits than newer workers. Instead the workers got a shaky amelioration of this system, but the system remains and could be restored fully when management feels able.
The workers also demanded an end to 80-hour workweeks caused by overtime rules, which had resulted in immense profits for the capitalist employers. The workers got no change to this exhausting and deadly system.
All this is locked in for five years in the new contract. (1) At Nabisco in July the BCTWGM bureaucrats negotiated a two-year contract; in September at Nabisco they produced a four-year contract; now at Kellogg they are bragging about a five-year contract! They are helping the capitalist bosses lock workers into longer and longer-lasting wages and conditions without the possibility of a legal strike. This could be called “contract-length inflation”!
The workers threw their energies and best efforts into their noble goals but the greedy Kellogg capitalists, who were awash in profits, arrogantly refused to budge. And the leaders of the Bakery Union refused to recommend continuing the strike until the workers' goals were reached. The workers may not have had sufficient faith in the union's tactics or in their own strength to continue and may have voted to end the strike. Or that may not be the story at all. Because the bureaucrats did not reveal the figures of the vote on the contract, leaving the workers to wonder if they actually did vote to end the strike. The union has a bizarre method of counting ballots: it takes all the ballots from the voting sites to its headquarters in Maryland to count them. The workers have no supervision over the count. (2) Needless to say, this raises the possibility of stealing the election from dissatisfied workers. So today the workers are still groaning under the weight of their oppressive conditions and are still divided by age and seniority.
"To have the fight stop when we're winning is very disheartening,” one Battle Creek worker, said. “You want to find someone happy about this contract, you have to travel because nobody here feels like this is a win,” he said. (3)
“I feel the person next to me should make what I make. It's a way to divide and conquer,” said Teddy Haywood, a Battle Creek worker. Haywood said he wanted the two-tier system eliminated altogether. “I want to see something where you can see the light when you first get here. Six to nine years or something like that, to me there is no light,” Haywood said. He said the pressure was on and striking workers were winning the fight. (3)
Observers had noticed that the product created by management and their hired scabs was greatly inferior and that the boycott that had caught on among the public was having serious effects. This added credence to the Battle Creek workers' dissatisfaction with the settlement. Comments on social media said: “I still saw a pallet of Ritz hardly touched at Walmart this week. Solidarity my friends and neighbors.... The grocery stores are trying to have sales to move the stuff out.... The Kellogg products on my local Walmart and target are full stocked and no one was buying such bulk or a piece.... Fuck Kelloggs is right. They can give two shits about your health or the planet for that matter.... If people have to go thru all this for their employer to do what's right, then they are still evil imo. Burn them to the ground. Boycott for life.” (4)
The strike did bring some improvements. Wages were not among them. Pay was raised by a mere 3% in only the first year of a five-year contract.
According to BCTGM’s Dec. 15 Tentative Agreement Highlights, legacy workers got a raise of $1.10 an hour for the contract year. There is no mention of raises in further years. $1.10 is a little over 3% of a Kellogg “legacy” worker's wage making $30 an hour, which is in the range of their pay. Therefore, the Kellogg legacy workers are receiving only a little more than a 3% wage increase and then only in the first year. As for COLA, it is capped at $3.00 per hour for the entire five years of the contract, so it can add no more than 10% to the wages. So the workers only got 13% over five years. At the current annual inflation rate of 6.3%, if that rate continues, inflation will gain by 31%. Thus this contract will leave the workers' wages 18% further behind the cost of living by the end of the contract. (5) This is scandalous! And even if inflation decreases, the workers are still likely in trouble (plus it could increase). No wonder the labor bureaucrats are not advertising these wages in their highlights of the contract and are keeping secret the workers' votes on it!
All lower-tier workers with over four years got legacy status immediately. Low-tier workers with less than four years seniority were given a way to jump into the long-term, “legacy” category if they make four years of super-exploitation, provided they are not sacked in the meantime, a common trick of employers to deny young workers seniority and the fruits of their time and labor. Cost of living increases are also included in the contract, but are said to be meager. (5)
The two-tier system was imposed on Kellogg workers in the 2015 negotiations. Until this year the contract carried a limit on lower-tier workers of 30% of the workforce. This year management demanded the elimination of this cap. The workers firmly rejected this, voting down management's first proposal. Workers pointed out that eliminating the cap on low-tier positions would lead to the entire workforce becoming low-paid, once the current “legacy” workers had retired. The BCTWGM bureaucrats claim that the new contract contains “no permanent two-tier system.” This is untrue; the system remains, individual workers can move through it to legacy status after 6-9 years, but only if they survive. (6)
The bureaucrats of the bakery union patted themselves on the back for stopping the strike and getting a bad 5-year contract. Anthony Shelton, president of the union, lauded the strikers who “courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract.” He emphasized that the deal “does not include any concessions.” (7) The bureaucrats had given concessions last time, so they thought that having no concessions was enough to satisfy the workforce. But concessions were not in the offing here; it was time to win significant improvements, not to stop the struggle 10% of the way!
In an embarrassment to Kellogg, an email internal to management fell into the workers' hands. Plant manager Gregory Jackson, speaking of the second tentative agreement which was similar to the final one adopted by the union leadership, wrote: “In short, [the] overall bucket of money (cost) stays the same. Just shifts money from one bucket to another. No gain overall for them with 3 more weeks of strike and no income. No ratification bonus.” This brutal statement reveals the hunger of management for blood from the workers. Questions about the authenticity of the email were settled when Jackson admitted he wrote it: “My characterization of the deal was taken out of context.” Jackson said. (8)
The Kellogg strike had become the banner-carrier for the wave of
strikes that had begun this fall under the nickname “Striketober” and
which had raised the bitter slogan “Last Year Heroes, This Year
Zeroes!” The capitalist mass media had labeled as “essential workers”
hundreds of thousands in numerous industries, where their risky labor
amidst the Coronavirus pandemic had sustained the economy of the
country. Now these workers have begun to strike to take back some of
the immense profits their labor had created for the parasitic
capitalist bosses. The working public was stirred by these small
strikes; they were inspired to support a boycott of Kellogg products,
and many refused to consume Kellogg cereals as the holiday season
began. Now strikes are breaking out in other places and the movement
will continue, but at Kellogg an opportunity was lost to greatly
improve conditions there and to give the strike movement a significant
victory.
(1) Aaron Gregg, “Unionized Kellogg’s workers in four states have approved a new five-year contract”, The Washington Post, Dec. 21. 2021.
(2) Tom Hall, “BCTGM union declares passage of contract at Kellogg’s, ending nearly three-month strike", WSWS, Dec. 21, 2021.
(3) Jay Shatara, “Some Battle Creek Kellogg workers feel betrayed by new union deal”, News Channel 3, Battle Creek, MI.
(4) “Kellogg’s Megathread (strike info, boycott, and more)”, redditt, Dec. 9, 2021.
(5) Noam Scheiber, “Kellogg workers ratify a revised contract after being on strike since October”, Dec. 21, 2021, The New York Times, and “Dec 15 Tentative Agreement Highlights”.
(6) Dave Jamieson, “Kellogg’s Workers End Strike”, Huffpost, Dec. 21, 2021.
(7) “Kellogg’s Strike Ends: BCTGM Members Ratify New Contract”, Dec. 21, 2021, BCTGM.
(8) Laina G. Stebbins, “Kellogg offer gives ‘no gain overall’ for workers, per plant manager’s leaked email”, Dec. 18, 2021, Metro Times. <>
Picture: nypost.com/2021/12/23/amazon-workers-in-staten-island-walk-out-during-holiday-rush/.
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