Following a year of bargaining impasse over “an assortment of pay and benefit issues,” nearly 1,500 Kellogg employees initiated a strike on Tuesday, halting production at all four of the firm’s U.S. factories. The employees, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), have been “working long, hard hours, day in and day out, to produce Kellogg ready-to-eat cereals for American families,” in the words of the union’s president. Yet “the company continues to threaten to send additional jobs to Mexico if workers do not accept outrageous proposals that take away protections that [they] have had for decades.” The news comes just a couple weeks after BCTGM terminated its weekslong strike against Nabisco, securing a new CBA guaranteeing annual wage hikes and enhanced retirement benefits. Those who wish to respect the picket line should avoid buying Cheez-Its, Pringles, Pop-Tarts, Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Eggo, among other snack items.

On Tuesday night FBI agents raided the office of the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), a union representing many New York City police officers, along with the home of the union’s president, prompting him to resign last night. The FBI offered little information about the raid, and the executive board of SBA, which has faced allegations of publishing sexist, homophobic, and racist tweets, informed its members that although “the nature and scope of this criminal investigation have yet to be determined,” “it is clear that President Mullins is apparently the target of the federal investigation.”

According to a new report released Tuesday by AFSCME Cultural Workers United (CWU), which represents thousands of employees at museums, cultural institutions, and libraries, several of the nation’s largest museums and zoos accepted billions in federal aid during the pandemic to ostensibly maintain their payrolls but nonetheless discharged thousands of employees. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, for example, received $3.3 million in pandemic loans from the federal government, yet it still laid off nearly 100 workers during the pandemic. The Philadelphia Museum of Art similarly secured a $5.1 million loan — and forked over thousands of dollars to a union-busting law firm hoping to thwart their employees’, ultimately successful, organizing efforts — but terminated over 100 employees. Moreover, CWU’s report underscores the degree to which unions protected their members during the pandemic — unionized employees in the cultural sector, the report reveals, experienced nearly 30 percent fewer job reductions than their nonunion counterparts.

On Tuesday, staffers at the Appeal, a digital outlet dedicated to criminal justice reform, announced that they have officially transitioned into a worker-led nonprofit organization. The announcement concludes, at least for the moment, a strange yet inspiring saga that commenced in May, when the publication’s employees declared that they had unionized and management responded by firing employees within minutes. The owners of the outlet subsequently attempted to shutter it entirely, but staffers ousted the old management team and undertook to relaunch the site as a “worker-led nonprofit news outlet.” According to the yesterday’s announcement, then, “the workers have officially taken over the Appeal.” Although its purview is criminal justice, the Appeal published a piece last year contending that the labor movement should expel police unions.

In legal news, a Ninth Circuit panel will hear oral argument today in the case of Hooks v. Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc., in which the court is tasked with reviewing a district judge’s order that Nexstar, America’s largest local television company, recognize and bargain with a CWA local representing several thousand of the firm’s employees. The case is notable in that it presents an appellate test of NLRB GC Jennifer Abruzzo’s policy of “aggressively seek[ing]” Section 10(j) relief, which she has characterized as “one of the most important tools available to effectively enforce the Act.” The District Court granted the Board’s request for injunctive relief in March, and the resulting injunction was one of several that Abruzzo cited in her August memo pledging to aggressively utilize Section 10(j). “Section 10(j) initiatives have led to extremely positive results,” Abruzzo wrote in the memo. By upholding the injunction, and thus blessing the Board’s more energetic employment of Section 10(j), the Ninth Circuit could inaugurate an era of more effective enforcement of the nation’s labor laws.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a trucking company’s claim that California’s test for classifying employees is preempted by the Federal Aviation and Administration Authorization Act as applied to motor carriers. Los Angeles had sued the trucking company involved in the litigation for misclassifying its drivers as independent contractors, and a California court ruled that the state law was not preempted by the federal statute, thereby obligating federally licensed motor carriers to comply with California’s classification scheme. Since the Court declined to review the case, that decision will stand. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit recently articulated the same position in a separate proceeding.