Global cereal and snack giant Kellogg Co. locked out workers represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local Union 252G last Tuesday at the company’s Memphis cereal facility.

The $14 billion company wants to replace steady middle-class, full-time jobs with casual part-time employees who would make significantly lower wages and substandard benefits. This will hurt these working families, the Memphis community and, ultimately, the company.

BCTGM International President David B. Durkee said:

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.

CLICK HERE to download a full fact sheet on the lockout.

This was originally posted on the BCTGM News blog.