People are flooding Kellogg's with fake job applications in solidarity with striking workers

People have crashed Kellogg's job portal website by flooding it with fake applications to show their support to union workers fighting for better wages and working conditions. Kellogg workers have been striking for more than two months trying to negotiate with management against the proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe over time as long as 16-hour-days for seven days a week. The company refuses to meet their demands, so they went on a strike.

Kellogg announced that they would hire permanent replacements for the 1,400 striking workers. People are now rallying around union workers who are putting their jobs on the lines for better pay and working conditions for their colleagues, reported Vice News. 

A Reddit post in the r/antiwork subreddit mobilized users and called on them to spam the job application website of Kellogg with fake applications. "The workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants have been striking for fair pay. Kellogg just announced they will hire 1400 permanent replacement scabs to break the strike. And they are accepting applications online!" read the post. Reddit user u/BloominFunions listed each of the job application site, so others could flood them with fake applications. “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 told people to download a sample resume from Google images to use in the applications.

Though the negotiations began in September, according to DailyDot, some workers stayed on the job at Kellogg for months without a single day off. The company refused to agree with the union's proposals for better pay, hours, and benefits, so more than 1,400 workers went on strike. The striking workers are part of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. Kellog shut down cereal production facilities in Battle Creek, Michigan, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Memphis, Tennessee, and Omaha, Nebraska.

Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local3G and a fourth-generation employee at the Kellogg’s plant in Battle Creek, Michigan called out the company over its treatment of workers. “This is after just one year ago, we were hailed as heroes, as we worked through the pandemic, seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Now apparently, we are no longer heroes. Very quickly you can go from hero to zero,” said Bidelman, reported The Guardian. “We don’t have weekends, really. We just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row. For 28 days the machines run then rest three days for cleaning. They don’t even treat us as well as they do their machinery.”

Kerry Williams, an 18-year employee of the family-friendly company said, "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," said Williams. “It’s like a death of 1,000 cuts. We had to work through this Covid for the last two years and they’ve just shown disrespect for the union name. They even want to remove our union logo from the cardboard cereal box." BCTGM president, Anthony Shelton said the company had threatened to outsource the jobs to Mexico if they continued their strike for better pay and working conditions. The Reddit post was upvoted 62k times. People also shared others brands that come under the umbrella of Kellogg, calling for a boycott of their products. Senator Nina Turner also shared the list of products and urged people to boycott them.