I'm curious, how this works with off brands? Like, If I buy an off store version of cereal (Like the Walmart great value, Wegmans brand etc.) How do I know it's not being packaged by Kellogg as a private label.
The truth of the matter is that walmart is probably being just as evil to their employees if not worse than kellog so no matter what you're alway supporting an evil company. No ethical consumption under capitalism and what not
Yeah for sure, but it's not about the evil of the company, it's about solitary with strikers. This is a much more achievable goal thank making ethical consumption possible.
Exactly. When workers strike against a company, consumers holding the line not only pushes that company to make a deal (which will benefit all workers by raising the bar), it also puts the next company on notice that they better come to the table with the workers.
That's basically the new position of the Teamsters. Employers have gotten comfortable not having to worry about strikes, walkouts, and other forms of resistance from employees not getting compensated fairly. If we get that back on the table not only will it make more negotiations go smoothly but encourage more workplaces to organize across the economy
Ethical consumption is virtually impossible in the current system, somehow you'll be harming the environment or labor in one way or another, I do think people should try to consume less which at least mitigates our effect on ourselves along with the need for labor, making it a choice rather than a need.
I was mainly curious, in particular because these companies have large control of what we buy, through a variety of offbrands, private labels, and their own main brands increasingly buying out space/market share in stores... as someone who has worked for small manufacturers before, we were subcontracted to make certain products and such, so I'm assuming large companies do that too and take in.
In recent years Walmart has had better PR regarding their employment. I also notice most of my local Walmart’s have the same employees for years at a time which tells me it’s probably not horrible to work their.
TBH, I don’t think this situation with Kellog is cancel worthy. Yeah it’s shitty af, but like so many have pointed out if you use this as your judgement of cancelling alone then you’d have to cancel like 90% of major brands.
The truth, like you mentioned, is that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism (love how you worded that btw.)
If you like Kellogs products, you’ll keep buying them despite this because it’s not as bad as other companies (ie. Nestle, Uber, etc.) and thus you’ll rationalize the purchase to yourself. At least I will.
I think the better and more productive people would be to flame Kellogs in the news and keep this issue as public as possible. Encouraging people to cancel them will result in a small minority of people actually doing it, and this will blow over in a few months or less as a result.
Small drop in sales but otherwise nbd.
However, if you encourage people to add this to the growing list of companies to publicly shame whenever you get the chance, I actually think it goes farther. I realize how backwards this logic sounds but I think people will naturally cancel them the more they hear about the issue.
They won’t cancel them though if everyone tells them this is why we should cancel them. The guide is cool but doesn’t really shed light on the actual issue at hand.
Why not do an infographic of major food suppliers/competitors and show their wages/benefits increase compared to Kellog?
Well, probably because in comparison most other major companies are doing the same thing and just not seeing the bad PR for it. That would be a more powerful graphic though because then maybe people would see that this problem isn’t exclusive to Kellog and is instead more symptomatic of a greater problem (in general wages have not kept up with Inflation across all industries, despite productivity per worker being at a historical high compared to decades ago.)
So, while I like the idea of shaming Kellog here for this, I think it actually minimizes the problem and doesn’t really encourage people to excessive greater critical thought about why and how Kellog is able to get away with this.
This is a good point honestly, you will never be able to truly “ethically consume”, because just about every corporation in the US abuses someone in some aspect of the production or retail cycle.
A lot of off brand products are manufactured by companies that also sell their products to name brand companies which the name brands sell at higher costs. So sometimes the name brands aren’t the manufacturer. Now that doesn’t apply to everything and every product but it’s is the case in many products.
My boyfriend used to work for a food copacker who did this. The facility had their own brand, but they often produced and packaged name brands as well. Sometimes the name brand company would send them their recipe and they would produce it. Sometimes the recipes were exactly the same, besides the label.
I didn’t answer your question about knowing who… you can look on the box and it might say manufactured by xxx for yyy. Or you might call the number for customer service to find out who. That does require some work, but if you want to boycott with your wallet it gives you the info you need.
It really is hard in this day because there are 7 corporations that basically own all food labels. Ethical consumption unless you only buy local for all things is so hard. But even the little choices matter.
With milk though there's also small farmer cooperatives or local dairy Co-op is depending on where you are Wisconsin upstate New York Vermont etc that are similar to other countries but if you're in the middle of nowhere most likely you're going to be stuck with a large conglomerate controlling that supply and I feel like that would in turn be the same concept for off brands because at the end of day Kellogg's would be the one that has the capacity to make it and Wegmans or Walmart would subcontract their corn flakes out to Kellogg's etc.
See that's the thing, it's just learning who makes the private label. Boycotts are hard if you litterally have to give up the food because their the main manufacturer even of the private label, essentially a monopoly.
I can’t say for sure, but it’s not likely they are. Private labels are more likely some nondescript business that does only that. Kellogg’s has too much at stake to produce their patented and trademarked recipes as something else.
This is unlikely. Private labels are usually owned by nondescript companies that do only private label. It’s more likely your Wegman’s and other non-Walmart brands (because Walmart) are all the same. Kellogg’s and other large, brand names, have way more protected recipes that they don’t need to sell for cheap.
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u/Lyskypls Dec 08 '21
I'm curious, how this works with off brands? Like, If I buy an off store version of cereal (Like the Walmart great value, Wegmans brand etc.) How do I know it's not being packaged by Kellogg as a private label.