Kellogg is seeking people to work in its factories to replace union workers who are striking for better wages and working conditions—and people on the antiwork subreddit are flooding the company’s job portal website with fake applications in solidarity with those workers.
In October, Kellogg’s workers shut down factories in cereal production facilities in Battle Creek, MI, Lancaster, PA, Memphis, TN and Omaha, NE. The striking workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union; they’ve been in negotiations with the company since September, after Kellogg’s proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe overtime as long as 16-hour-days for seven days a week. Some workers stayed on the job for months without a single day off. The company refuses to meet the union’s proposals for better pay, hours, and benefits, so they went on strike.
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Earlier this week, the company announced it would permanently replace 1,400 striking workers.
In a Reddit post in the r/antiwork subreddit—which recently mobilized to hack businesses’ receipt printers to send out anti-work messaging—the user BloominFunions listed each of the job application sites and suggested that spamming the systems would throw some grit into Kellogg’s gears.
“It’s time to clog their toilet of an application pipeline,” they wrote. “Using the job posting links above, submit an application for one or more sites. When you apply, pretend you’re a resident of one of the cities with a Kellogg strike (Omaha, Battle Creek, Lancaster or Memphis) and make up an address and phone number using the zip codes and area codes listed below. This way they can’t filter out our apps easily.”
They also suggested downloading a sample resume from Google Images to send with the fake applications.
The job applications blame the union workers for labor shortages at the factories. “The Unions representing Kellogg employees in these plants are on strike, and we are looking for employees to permanently replace them, joining hundreds of Kellogg salaried employees, hourly employees, and contractors to keep the lines running,” the job descriptions state. These job listings have been up since at least October.
“We’re working 12 to 16 hours a day to meet the increased demand in the cereal market,” Kerry Williams, an 18-year employee of Kellogg’s, told Motherboard in October at the start of their strike. “I’ve worked for two years with no weekends off other than vacation days. You miss out on a lot—family time, don’t get to see kids play sports, don’t get to see your spouse.”
