As part of its massive nationwide program of job cuts, cereal maker Kellogg’s has announced that another 76 employees will lose their jobs in Maryland.
The breakfast food giant announced that it will close down its distribution center in Hagerstown, according to the Herald-Mail.
The facility located at 11841 Newgate Boulevard in the Hunters Green II Business Park is only one of the 39 distribution centers being shut down as part of a program dubbed “Special K” by the Michigan-based company.
“While this is the right move for the company to achieve our long-term objectives, it was a difficult decision because of its impact on employees,” Kellogg’s spokeswoman Kris Charles told the paper in February.
Kellogg’s told the state employment office responsible to regulate mass layoffs of its move on May 26, the paper reported.
The announcements coincided with a 4.1 percent drop in sales during the first fiscal quarter.
“In the first quarter, we managed through an unusually challenging environment for packaged food companies, including a period of industrywide softening of consumption trends,” John Bryant, Kellogg’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Bryant added that the company had a “slow start” but that despite that, “it is expected to improve for the second fiscal quarter ending in August.”
The company is also facing a lawsuit filed by the thousands of distributors and truckers who face financial devastation due to Kellogg’s new distribution plan.
At the beginning of the year, Kellogg’s began the process of closing dozens of distribution centers and laying off as many as 11,000 workers, but contractors are soon to file a lawsuit, as they claim that Kellogg’s did them wrong with the abrupt shift in its supply chain system.
Supply and shipping industry journal SupplyChainDive.com recently reported that a group of sub-contractors, who bid for and won work as drivers and distributors, are filing a class action lawsuit over Kellogg’s new business plan. The lawsuit will charge the breakfast food giant with a breach of contract, wrongful termination of contracts, and lack of fair dealing, an attorney’s letter said.
Kellogg’s has already laid off thousands of workers during the last two months. To name a few, almost 500 were fired in North Carolina, nearly 300 were fired in facilities in New York, and another 219 lost their jobs in Minnesota. Another 500 were laid off in Pennsylvania.
The cereal giant’s troubles also come on the heels of the company’s decision to pull its advertising from Breitbart News. As it pulled advertising from the popular news site last November, company spokesperson Kris Charles said Breitbart News and its 45 million readers “aren’t aligned with” the cereal maker’s “values as a company.”
The move prompted Breitbart News to launch its #DumpKellogg’s petition, which has been signed by more than 431,000 people.
Kellogg’s attack on Breitbart News readers also came amid widespread allegations of racism toward its factory workers and profiting from the use of child labor.
Reportedly, Kellogg’s politically motivated non-profit has close ties to billionaire George Soros, Black Lives Matter, and deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The left-wing campaign to coerce companies to pull their ads from Breitbart News has had “little to no impact” on the organization, Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said in a November statement. But it does show contempt for customers who lean to the center-right in the American political spectrum.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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