In the heart of Amish country, Pennsylvania, with its red farms and long grain elevators, stands a Kellogg’s factory, maker of breakfast cereals. Tom Roberts, 57, holds a picket line, with a dozen comrades, in front of one of the two entrances to the Lancaster site. This Friday, October 22, this worker is in his third week on strike. He sniffs the air, watches over the factory where outside labor is busy. “They are trying to produce, but we don’t see smoke coming out of the chimney. They can’t do it ”, he said hopefully, even though the company claims its factories are “Operational”, thanks to external workers brought by bus. The mood is cheerful. In the company of his colleagues, he grills us a cheeseburger and does not worry.
We haven’t seen a strike at Kellogg’s for decades. A prosperity strike, where the balance of power was reversed in favor of the workers. Tom Roberts earns $ 30 an hour, four times the Pennsylvania minimum wage. He is not worried: in a country where the labor shortage is generalized, he applied, in the meantime, for a job at the factory opposite, Charles & Alice, which manufactures fruit compote and planted a beautiful sign: “We are hiring. “ “They contacted me, I didn’t have time to call them back. “
The strikers’ main demand is to end the two-tier pay system, which leads veterans like Mr. Roberts to earn $ 30 an hour and the most recent hires, $ 18. This lower remuneration was accepted in 2015 by the unions, due to the difficulties of the moment, while Kellogg’s had threatened to close two of the four American factories to relocate them to Mexico. The company wanted to be able to generalize this system, currently limited to 30% of employees, which would have led to the extinction of the status of veterans.
Inversion of the balance of power
The unions, coming out of the health crisis, want to go back, believing that the situation has changed. “They made more money than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic”, accuses Dave Eliott, 58, an electrician for three decades. Confined, Americans fed on grain, while workers at Kellogg’s were among the few working to produce much-needed food. “We never stopped producing. The police ask us for our essential worker badge. The company called us heroes, and it thanks us with second-class employees ”, he continues.
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