Leaked email exposes union-management conspiracy to defeat Kellogg’s strike as Sanders attempts to deflect anger towards Mexico

While More Perfect Union’s reporting ignored the key reference to the union, the email exposes BCTGM as complicit in management’s attempt to break the strike, and that management is relying upon the union to “pass” a contract which workers already rejected. Moreover, the instructions to fellow managers to keep radio silence around workers on the contract is a clear signal that they are relying principally on the union to browbeat opposition on their own behalf.

Workers should respond by rejecting the entire fraudulent framework of this so-called “collective bargaining,” which is exposed as, in reality, a union-management conspiracy to break their courageous struggle. The entire bargaining committee should be kicked out, and a new bargaining committee elected consisting of the most trusted rank-and-file workers from the shop floor.

[wsws.org]

{Last week, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the silence from the BCTGM in response to management’s threat to fire workers en masse following the last contract vote amounted to tacit consent, and that the union was working with management to overcome workers’ resistance through a combination of threats and intimidation. This has now been proven beyond a doubt, first by the “new” tentative agreement itself, and now by the leaked email.}

WSWS doesn't miss much! When it comes to unions today they all operate much to the same tune. If you follow WSWS it will expand your intellect on your working environment, especially if you're in a union. Such as corporations that now all use the tobacco and oil industries history of combating law suits. They use those same templates that provide the best results to win or diminish a negative outcome. First is winning over a bought judicial system to keep if from going to trial, then if not, conning a jury into acceptance within various means.

{In the days leading up to the election, the BCTGM is engaged in a massive campaign of censorship. Only hours after the TA was announced, it archived several local Facebook groups with thousands of members in order to prevent workers from speaking to each other and building up opposition to the contract. In this, they are taking a page out of the playbook of the United Auto Workers, which used similar methods this fall to force through a re-vote of a contract which workers had also rejected in order to end a month-long strike at John Deere.}

[They’re manipulating stock prices, acting like we’ve given up. I hope the members are smarter than the leadership on this BS agreement.

“This contract would make me lots of money,” he added, “and get me the four years I need to retire, but I don’t care about that right now. I’m sick of seeing the young people getting screwed. This is still not good for them. I’m voting NO. If it goes down, [Kellogg’s] will bring another before this quarterly report comes out.”

“This contract is the same as the last one, just a few words changed around. If we vote it in now, this whole strike will have been for nothing. I hope we vote NO!”

“We’ve seen this type of stuff before,” he said. “In the 2015 contract, when they started the transitional lower tier, a lot of people were talking about the shady deals that BCTGM had taken.”]

{Added Emphasis --- Asshat Bernie Sanders stumps for the union, promotes “America First” nationalism at Battle Creek rally

Earlier in the day, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan in an effort to drum up support for the union and divert workers’ anger. The event, which lasted less than thirty minutes and was largely comprised of the same demagogic phrases which Sanders has employed for years, had an unreal character to it, presenting the BCTGM officialdom as the vanguard of the fight against Kellogg’s even as they are deep in a campaign to force through a sellout contract.

Sanders attempted to present the central issue of the strike as a disloyal US-based company threatening to ship American jobs to Mexico. At the climax of his speech, he declared,“If you love America, you love the workers. And if you love American workers, you don’t ship their jobs to desperate people in Mexico and pay them 90 cents an hour.”

This reactionary “America First” nationalism is no different in principle from that of Donald Trump and extreme right. In fact, Breitbart, whose former editor Steve Bannon is a key Trump ally, is attempting to capitalize upon the BCTGM's own anti-Mexican campaign to bolster the credibility of its own fascistic politics.}

It was nice to of Sanders to take time out of his day to spend 30 fucking minutes to come and collaboratively help spread Mexican hatred upon American workers. Consider this Batman. Kellogg's already has at least one plant in Mexico. {“We have plants in Mexico, Canada, the UK — Manchester is a very big cereal plant — and even as far away as Australia.} I guess the real question we need to know is whether he is also aware of the atmosphere of the deceptive negotiations in which he should seemingly be addressing if he was sincerely concerned for American workers. Only if you put a critical following into Sanders will you discover how capitalistic he is and how undemocratically socialistic he is. He's quite comfortable with supporting the horrific westernized agendas against democratic socialist nations around the world. He even does the demonization speak against them very well also. Fair warning. Sanders cares as much towards those jobs going to Mexico as Trump cared about the jobs from Carrier that went to Mexico.

{This anti-Mexican demagogy serves only to isolate the strike from its most powerful reservoir of support, the international working class. Sanders is not a Nazi, but his promotion of anti-Mexican nationalism serves only to disarm the working class and lend political legitimacy to the far right.}

{In fact, independent studies have shown that the American food supply was never under any danger even in the early stages of the pandemic. However, by keeping workers on the job as long as possible, Kellogg’s and other major food companies have seen their profits soar, even as tens of thousands of food workers have been infected and hundreds have died.}

In contrast to the economic nationalism of Sanders, many Kellogg’s workers see workers in other countries as their natural allies. As one worker noted, “The support we have been receiving from all over the country, all over the world—it is really moving. We are being followed by a lot of people, and I don’t know what will happen if we win or if we lose, but it is very powerful to see Palestinian workers in Israel holding up a banner in support of our strike.”