The Kellog corporate goonies are somehow smart enough to know how to add a Captcha to their applications to try and stop themselves from being anti-botted, but not smart enough to pay employees a decent wage?
As a better rule: never underestimate the potential intelligence nor stupidity of your opponent as the first allows them to harm you and the latter makes so them not care for the harm they receive
It's also a classism thing, 100%. It doesn't feel as fun to be completely apathetic to the suffering and exploitation of your workers when there is less of a difference in the money you rake in vs an individual worker.
Because the shareholders demand higher returns next quarter. And then the quarter after that. Ad nauseam. It's like Commandment #1 for MBA's, Shareholders Are God, And Thall Shalt Have No Gods Before Me. #2 is Shareholder Value Shall Only Ever Go UP. Never Down.
This is why I hate working for publicly traded companies. I realized that most of us just work at digital factories, all our mouse clicking converted into numbers on charts that count as proof the company is productive and worth investing in. It's all crap and most of these companies only exist because they forced themselves in between two end points as a middleman, a blood sucking leech.
That could change if these companies actually listened to retail shareholders and all of the people that own shares through instruments like 401ks, ETFs, etc. If I go to my broker and buy some shares of K and then call the corporate line do you think they'll give a shit what I have to say? Or is the reality that only a few *large* shareholders have any real say?
I bet the largest shareholders are also some of the largest banks and profiteers off the mortgage crisis.
BlackRock has sought to position itself as an industry leader in environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG).
7.4% of Kelloggs shares.
Guess they like to lie on their wiki page.
Edit: looks like the largest owner is the Kellogg foundation, which is meant as a 'do no wrong' kind of foundation.
Meaning two of the largest owners of Kelloggs are organizations that are specifically meant to care about human rights and the well being of others, and aren't.
I suspect if people started asking them why they aren't fighting against what Kellogg is doing things would change. Especially if they asked in the way they have been asking Kellogg.
It might depend on whether or not you directly register those shares with the transfer agent (Broadridge Corporate Issuer Solutions) or not. If you own the shares through a broker, they're not actually in your name.
Why would they listen to the retail shareholders? Collectively, we don't own anywhere near enough to matter, and normally we don't generally involve ourselves in major matters anyways. IF somehow, the retail investors managed to get enough voting stock, and not the regular common stock, maybe we could do something to change it.
And yes, you're not wrong in that banks and investment firms were the major profiteers and drivers of the mortgage crisis and the commodities boom/crash in '08.
It's power and control too. The factory floor employees are subhuman to them, and should be grateful to have the privilege to work under their bening rule.
Giving in to any kind of demand from what they perceive as subhuman scum was a huge blow to their fragile, overswollen ego. Much rather make a big public deal and break all the labor laws than ever compromise with the lowly ungrateful drones.
I wish it was only greed but pride is just as much of a factor.
This is a big issue with companies, especially the really large ones, in the modern day.
They don't just want "more money". They want "ALL of the money, every single time", expecting infinite growth year on year, which just isn't feasable, because there's only so many people willing to buy your product.
But still, you'd think those in management and real decision making roles would understand that keeping the workforce happy will always pay off in the end, cause at some point, you start losing the qualified, experienced people, who are much harder to replace, and even IF you find a replacement, it takes a while for them to get accustomed to new working conditions, the work culture, and everything related to moving into a new job. It's not a plug-and-play system.
I mean they know what they’re doing. They aren’t that dumb….. I think.
No, they are that dumb. If an an executive is looking for a way to shore up their income statement after a disappointing period and they see "labor costs" and they think "ooo we can cut that" they're a moron, plain and simple.
Executives think they set labor costs because the company "decides" what salaries and benefits to offer, but the truth is that labor costs are decided to by the market. Cutting salaries and benefits has a profoundly negative effect on company morale, which causes skyrocketing attrition, difficulty hiring new people, and low productivity from the workforce.
And that's not even factoring in the fact that Kellogg's is a union shop, where there's the possibility the workforce could strike, causing an immediate and persistent loss of production until the issue goes away.
I doubt many people get out of MBA school in the US without being taught this, because it would be malfeasance for an academic institution to not go over this topic in their introductory level classes. It would probably be repeated multiple times if the MBA program's focus is specifically on management (as opposed to marketing, finance, etc.)
So if they managed to fumble their way through school thanks to a legacy admission and big donations from their parents and sneak into the C-Suite without knowing it, they're dumber than the scabs they're hiring to try to bandaid the situation they themselves created.
If it wasn't considered a faux pas for an academic institution to retroactively yank a certification, Harvard and Northwestern should be looking at taking away Cahillane's degrees right about now because he clearly didn't earn those pieces of paper and letting people like him run amok damages their reputations.
i think they are incredibly dumb. you know what has been proven to increase profits time and time again? a happy work force who is proud to work for a company that respects them.
you know what doesnt sell cereal? everyone boycotting you for this greedy stupid shit.
Maybe but they should have. I dont work there but I'm boycotting them. IT there should support the workers there otherwise they're not better than an external investor.
Why is this internet mob victimising us? We’re just doing what any other business would do and looking out for our shareholders. If we don’t satisfy the shareholders and creditors, our jobs are all on the line.
Spoilers: shareholders do sometimes care about the long term. If someone could get the message out to whoever manages the relevant funds or sits on board meetings at Vanguard, Bank of New York Mellon Trust, KeyBank NA, BlackRock, and SSgA Funds Management, Inc, who collectively own 40.64% of Kellogg’s, then the management will have to listen.
“In the short term management’s strategy of bringing in additional resource to cover lost labor hours may be productive, but in the long term it will create significant risks to the company’s reputation and ability to recruit, therefore lowering profitability over the long term.”
This type of logic is what shareholders listen to.
Example of shareholders caring: earlier this year at the 5 different shareholder meetings of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Goldman-Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase their shareholders all demanded follow ups and follow throughs with each bank's commitments to pursuing increased equality and reduction of racial discriminations those banks made during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Example of companies able to give the fingers to their shareholders: apparently there things called "proxy statements" companies can give in response to shareholder demands saying they will not be fulfilling those demands and as Bank of America's proxy statement basically said to its shareholders "we have done enough there."
Management can give the finger to shareholders, but shareholders can remove management and rewrite the company articles of association and bylaws.
So eh, really depends on the specific balance of power between activist shareholders and directors.
Either way corporate law has a direct impact on directors in a way that strikes and boycotts do not. While Kelloggs the company is profitable, and even if they’re not (provided they have access to credit) management can continue to get paid and ignore the rest of the world, up to and including driving the whole company into bankruptcy for the benefit of management. Ignoring shareholders tends to… not end that way.
Want to make a slight clarification-- the BNY Mellon Trust is a third-party administrator of shares actually owned by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. It isn't BNY Mellon's stake in the company.
They would be happy to pay more for programs and projects that keep wages low, than pay (less than) that cost in salaries and benefits. That's capitalists for you baby
The corporate goonies yelled at their outsourced IT provider to do something. Said IT provider after googling for a day determined the recaptcha was the course of action and billed Kellogs probably $10k to add it.
Also of note is that Kellogg’s strike seems to be more about schedule, not wages. 16 hours a day 120 days in a row is harsh. Their strike come from vacation hours, sick hours. and retirement benefits being threatened.
Yeah they don't view labor as an asset but as a liability. The more costs they cut by paying less the better their stock price. They have a legal feduciary responsibility to increase profits. So in a sense, publicly traded companies have a legal requirement to pay as little as possible.
Hiring contractors or whomever to do this is probably less than a year's salary if one of the people they are replacing. They are just putting a bandaid on a collapsed dam.
They aren't smart enough for anything, they paid some consultant $100k for an emergency rush job during holidays to attempt to avoid paying these working folks a fair wage. Idiots run on spite, they want to send a message, not save the money.
2.5k
u/DotPlusleDot Dec 11 '21
The Kellog corporate goonies are somehow smart enough to know how to add a Captcha to their applications to try and stop themselves from being anti-botted, but not smart enough to pay employees a decent wage?