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Kellogg’s ‘trying to take away our cost of living’: Omaha, NE BCTGM Local 50G Pres.

Dan Osborn, President of BCTGM Local 50G in Omaha, Nebraska, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the ongoing strike of Kellogg’s workers.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live, everyone. American union workers behind Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, and Raisin Bran are striking a better deal, or trying to strike a better deal, at the Kellogg Company. US cereal plants have walked off the job since the beginning of this month. And while other picket lines are popping up now nationwide amidst labor shortages and severe supply chain issues, joining us now is Dan Osborne, president of the local union in Omaha, Nebraska, and Yahoo Finance's Dani Romero. Thanks so much for joining us, Dan. Tell us--

DAN OSBORN: Thank you.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: --what the main sticking points are right now for your members with regards to Kellogg.

DAN OSBORN: The main sticking points are they're trying to take away our cost of living. That's our only source of a wage increase. It's not a raise. What it does, it keeps us even with inflation. That gets rolled in every time we ratify a contract. That's one of the big ones. The second one is the two-tier wage system. They're trying to make it-- right now, there's a 30% cap on the lower tier. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to make that 100%, so eventually, everybody will be on the lower tier. That's about $12 an hour less, higher insurance premiums, less vacation time, less vacation benefits. So that's the two main things we're fighting for right now.

DANI ROMERO: And Dan, you know, I wanted to play you a clip from the spokesperson at Kellogg in response to your efforts. I wanted to get your take on it. We're going to play it for you.

- The union alleges that Kellogg has threatened to move jobs to Mexico if they don't agree to our proposals. That is completely false. We've not proposed moving any cereal volume or jobs outside of the US as part of these negotiations. Kellogg is ready, willing, and able to continue negotiations at any time. In the meantime, we have a responsibility to our business, customers, and consumers.

DANI ROMERO: So, Dan, what is your response to this statement?

DAN OSBORN: Well, I was not at the negotiation table myself, but I was told-- and this came out from our international president that that was said at negotiations as part of the negotiations as a threat if we kept continuing on with our outrageous proposals.

DANI ROMERO: Yeah, and we've seen multiple nationwide strikes. What has shifted to really bring us to this point?

DAN OSBORN: And I wanted to touch one more time-- sorry-- on that last question. There is currently Mexican cereal on our shelves right now that they're bringing up from a plant called Mexicali, the second plant-- I can't remember. But they are shipping Mexican product up currently.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Right, but I thought the issue was, going forward, that the union workers were concerned that going forward, jobs would be moved out of the US, into Mexico. Is that, indeed, what you've heard from the company?

DAN OSBORN: Yes, that was said at the negotiating table.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to get your opinion on what Kellogg's attempting to do here. They're looking for-- they're placing ads for people to actually cross the picket line for non-union members to come in, work the assembly line, to keep these products continuing to hit store shelves. What would your message be to people who are considering doing that?

DAN OSBORN: Well, my message would be consider your choices carefully. For every one of them that go and try to take our production jobs, that's a family who has medical bills and our mortgages and car payments and everything that you have to pay for on a day-to-day basis. They're taking that away from these people.

DANI ROMERO: And do you know how long this agreement will take? I mean, I think it's been over a year now.

DAN OSBORN: No, it's actually only been 14 days. In 2020, this contract that we're currently talking about expired, and we agreed with the company at that time to extend that 2015 contract into 2021. And so that's where we're at now. We came at an impasse on October 5th.

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