Kellogg evaluating whether to close plants; company employs at least 450 in Omaha

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald

By Barbara Soderlin

Kellogg Co., which employs at least 450 workers at its Omaha plant, said Tuesday that it is evaluating whether to close any of its four U.S. cereal plants, in the wake of union opposition to a proposal to trim wage and benefit costs.

Union workers, including those in Omaha, on Thursday overwhelmingly voted against a proposal that would have kept all the plants open at least through October 2018 but would have created a new group of lower-paid “transitional” workers and eliminated some benefits, including cost-of-living adjustments and retiree health care for new employees, the Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer reported.

John Dredla, business agent for the union’s Local 50G in Omaha, confirmed that Omaha workers participated in the vote but said he could not comment further.

Kellogg Co. is facing declining sales of cereal and told The World-Herald it has too much production capacity at the same time it has higher labor costs than competitors. Its workers in Omaha are paid $28 per hour on average, or an average of $85,000 annually with overtime, a Kellogg spokeswoman said. Employees and spouses also receive health care coverage for life at no cost.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://www.omaha.com/money/kellogg-evaluating-whether-to-close-plants-company-employs-at-least/article_5ccec445-3493-503a-83ec-88c9bb2d720b.html

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Current stock quote: Kellogg Company NYSE: K - Dec 10 10:48 AM ET 65.750.07 (0.11%)

Earnings per share $4.81.

[Lean]

1. Kellogg's Boycott

Apparently, the Kellogg's boycott is working. Perhaps if they stopped using GMO ingredients, their sales wouldn't be plummeting. The non-GMO and organic markets continue to expand and prosper.

[tridim]

2. The problem is that they use carbs for their ingredients

Carbs (refined grain and sugar) which are now known to cause diabetes and obesity.

We have been conditioned to believe that cereal is healthy. It is anything but.

[bulloney]

4. Most of the breakfast cereals on the store shelves are glorified candy snacks.

Most of the nutrition you get from eating these products for breakfast comes from the milk you pour on the cereal.

[tridim]

5. Yep, and people have been pouring skim milk on cereal for decades...

Which is essentially sugar-water. It is a byproduct of whole milk with all the good parts removed and sold separately. Corporate genius.

Skim milk is a product custom made specifically for suckers.

[staggerleem]

9. Well, Steve, you've stolen my thunder.

That's exactly the point I was going to make.

I guess I'll take this opportunity to add, for anyone who isn't aware, that Kellogg's acquired Khashi a few years back - meaning that the vast majority of products by the company whose slogan used to be "7 whole grains on a mission" is very likely now using Genetically-Modified versions of 6 of those 7 grains. Khashi now has exactly ONE line of non-GMO product, essentially a few flavors of Shredded Wheat cereals. Everything else likely contains one or another form of Frankenfood. (One wonders how the Junior Senator from MN feels about the increasing popularity of that term.)

[mountain grammy]

3. and they're still earning nearly $5/share.. really Kellogg????

[Omaha Steve]

14. Disney's EPS

http://finance.yahoo.com/q;_ylt=Anxvk1Bpo5GqMjyMzAM1q.onv7gF?uhb=uhb2&fr=uh3_finance_vert_gs&type=2button&s=dis

EPS (ttm): 4.26

And Disney has many union workers too.

[turbinetree]

6. Lack of Wages

I and a lot of us grew up with Kellogg's, and ate some if not all of there products.
What is not being said is that since 1980 when the era of trickle down economics was fully implemented, there has been an attack on the worker and families in this country for over 40 years and longer, in everything, and by laws to further this degradation of the worker.
Kellogg can produce an organic product with out biological engineering, we have to or should step out of the box and think of global warming and what it is doing to the aggregate of less produce ability of the land and the world, when there is "only" so much land availability, to produce more food requirements by populations of this planet.
Everything that we humans do, drives the economic reality that we are trying to substitute or the need to have food or the lack of there of, by because of the weather, pollution, and outright greed, and to say that 28 dollars per hour is to much, is absolutely wrong.
We need to know how much the board of directors make and are these directors under other food giants that sit on there respective boards and have targeted the Kellogg worker as the first of many fronts to lay blame and we need ask how much the directors make, per the ratio of the worker.
Maybe this should be an employee run business?
How much they pay there investment advisors on wall street to promote this irresponsible behavior of looking for blame to justify there actions.

[Populist_Prole]

7. Notice their spokeswoman's spin

They all pull that shit during episodes like this: Inflating wage figures by cherry picking and including overtime and benefits. Trying to make the employees look spoiled and greedy to an envious public.

Prediction: If the union gives concessions, the company will close the plants anyway. Overcapacity is overcapacity.

Assholes.

[sulphurdunn]

8. If their sales are slipping so much, why

are they paying overtime? At $28 an hour, a worker would need to work 240 days a year to net about $54K. To reach $85K, that worker would need to work 92 more days of overtime at time and a half to net $85k a year, which means that either Kellogg is working its people to death but wants to hire new ones cheap enough to reduce overtime, cut benefits and boost profits, or is lying through its cornflake ass about the "average" wage of its employees.

[louis-t]

10. Corporations have been known to lie about wages they pay.

I can remember my right wing cousin claiming that if a union worker was paid $20 and hour, $10 of that went to the union, and that GM employees were making $70 an hour when you figured in their benefits. Actually, it turns out that the extra $40 an hour came from adding in the cost of all retirees' pensions, so it was a phony number.

[NewDeal_Dem]

15. Likely that figure isn't true hourly, but includes the hourly value of healthcare & other

costs (including, as the previous poster said, pension costs and retirees health care costs). That's usually how corporations report it in the media, as if they were handing out $28/hr straight checks each week. They rarely (never) are.

[Sunlei]

11. maybe a plan to ship the grain to china and use slaves to process cereal & ship finished back.

They can close the Omaha plant and break another Union

From visits to Beijing supermarkets there’s no doubt that multinationals are going all out for a cereals market which industry figures agree is growing at 15 to 20% a year. Branding itself as Jia Le Shi (Kellogg’s name in Chinese means ‘family fun clan’) Kellogg Co has started to roll out its familiar cornflake boxes in Chinese-language packaging

http://www.eiu.com/industry/article/781324062/china-breakfast-firms-look-for-cereal-numbers/2013-12-10

[DeSwiss]

12. Kellogg + GMO = Major Suckage

- That's the formula they're concocting now. Guaranteed to lose customers because you end up killing them off with the very products you're trying to sell them.....

K&R

[HuckleB]

16. Ignorance is not an excuse for promoting anti-GMO lies.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Seeds_of_Death

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/05/31/gary-null-cultivator-of-dangerous-woo-plants-seeds-of-death/

[Orsino]

13. Damn it, I was already boycotting Kellogg. n/t

[HuckleB]

17. Why?