Thread regarding Kellogg Co. layoffs

What I am seeing...

Sorry but this will be long. If you listened to the conference call, they stated that the only business that grew was the crackers. Who grew that business? Cheezits pay all the bills. Now you're getting rid of the only people who grew your business? They say their was a loss in revenue. That's a theoretical loss off numbers based of off horrible budgets given by teams who tend to auto ship and in the past, cross dock out millions of dollars. When product goes warehouse, it will take a huge hit in spacing. I've already had almost half of my product cut in a reset. Our product will begin to look like great value..... Empty. Tell us how hard it is to lay us all off but the ceo will be receiving an 8mil increase in just his salary alone??? Around 25 mil given last year to executives. 1mil donated to blm. 750k house built for a blm retreat home. Just purchased Pringles and forced KSR's to give free labor by not adding the product to their budget and forcing them to work the product and order it for display. Same thing with Austin cracker. But we are losing money?

Ties to Castro. Literal millions spent on GMO label blocking. Slave labor accusations in Asian countries. Plants built and moved to Mexico. Expanding in to sub Saharan Africa (who will just love our food...) and expanding in to Europe and Asia (who will also love our food...). But we are losing money?

Project K was established in 2014 or earlier if I'm not mistaken. Recent statements by CEO say this is all part of project K. It's been in the works for awhile now. If you look at the time line, project Wilson last year, where many employees were layed off or demoted, are out of severance pay. All the while, district managers moved from level 3 to level 4 (promotion and pay raise). Same for other management as well. Well now, in the new structure, DM's will be eliminated and zone managers will be demoted from a level 4 to a level 5. All while having much larger territory. If you look at everything as a whole, it seems they didn't wanna lay off everyone at once and separate the severance out. The Wilson system was specifically designed to fail. It's an excuse to lay off more without many questions. The merch hours budget isn't even half what is needed to properly drive to a store, stack the order, work the back stock and front. 15 minutes for a pull up including drive time? Ok.

Management is a total laugh. You will be hired and promoted based solely off of your race and gender. Seen it happen myself several times. Diversity and inclusion right? Well when the new lay offs were planned. They stated that they will be looking at job history to decide whether or not one will be receiving a job. I was a top performer in the zone but will be cut. Asked them to explain why and they said geography. The few kept in the district were the bottom performers. Kellogg hired a third party to come in, lay out districts and pick who stays, all solely based off geography. This company lies about everything constantly.

Speaking on severance. They are giving the potential to earn your awesome 2015 Ford Focus with the broke transmission and 55,000k miles on it due to you driving so much for work. If you make your budget at 95% until lay off date, I believe. The POS budgets are going to be insane and totally untouchable. Also completely out of our control so how are we going to earn our awesome car? Well don't worry, they are going to give you 6k for a stay on bonus so they don't lose sales of you leave. Well you get 25% after signing but the rest will be put in an account you can't get until October... Ok cool. Ever notice that if a lot of reps make their period or quarter budget, the next period or quarter budget is always extremely delayed and seems to be significantly higher??? Ya I wonder if that will come to play again. Not to worry though because the newest and hottest incentive is Special K shirts if you hit your budget!!!! Can you slap me in the face any harder? Trying to unload your shirt inventory on us and calling it an incentive? That is amazingly insulting. How about you just pay me the mod money that I'm owed that is also about 6 months late.

Let's auto ship and cross dock the heck out of Walmart and send in new items all weeks in advance to prepare for the resets and march madness.... Well half the new items for the resets aren't even in the sets!!! Stores are refusing orders because dozens of cases of these "new" items are being sent on top of mods for cheezits for March madness. Week 1 - full mod of club and cheezits for March madness display. (At least they are the same price point)

Week 2 - nutra grain for fighting hunger that begins in over 4 weeks.

Week 3 - half mod of cheezits to replenish for March madness displays.

Week 4 - Manager: we have X amount of mods in warehouse that need to be sent. You each are required to send 4 to each Walmart. Need an email when you have ordered. No exceptions.

Can't you guys just let me do my job?

Top everything off. Kellogg is saying it will be laying off 1,100 employees and 39 distribution centers. That's a bold face lie. That's the number of union members to be layed off. 1,000 KSR's to be layed off in my zone alone. Plus several managers and over another thousand in merchandisers. The total number has to be closer to 6-8k. But Special K values right???

Sorry guys, I could go on for hours about how terrible this company is but its hard to coordinate all my thoughts on this right now as I'm being hounded by emails and more training I have to complete even though I'm being canned.

Good luck to everyone. I really wish you all the best.

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| 1451 views | | 6 replies (last March 23, 2017) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+MrKKD1m

6 replies (most recent on top)

I get tons of emails, w m on hands, push, push,push, I don't know about u guys, but I have a screw it attitude , they can keep the pice of junk ford focus , taxes eat up the bonus so it works out to be 10.00 per day net for busting your but. I don't know about you , but I'm doing as less as possible , I really push myself just to get out of bed in the morning , good luck to all.

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Post ID: @nub+MrKKD1m

You have a point and I agree to an extent as well but just in personal opinion, if they wanted a big cash out, split the stock, as it's at a splitting price. Bring back cross dock in copious amounts and drive budgets through the ceiling. Let that run for a year. Have huge numbers then cash out. Rather now they are sacrificing sales for profitability. It seems this is their long term plan for easy cash flow. No over head or liability with people falling off ladders, car crashes, insurance and ect... Don't have to pay near as many benefits to employees and so on and so forth. It will be essentially a business that runs itself and the executives can kick back, take off their shoes and just take in constant cash flow with shovels. 75% less headache and outsourced plants means easy business.

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Post ID: @aup+MrKKD1m

I think they really (obviously) don't care about the business. Like someone stated earlier its just financial engineering meant to make a small few a lot of money. Making the business viable is secondary to making the leadership team and the board a ton of money. I honestly can see no positive outcome of this transition other then staving off a takeover and making the leadership team and a select few a lot of cash. The whole 2020 or 2018 thing is just a smokescreen. Dump expenses, drive up stock price, cash out stock options, get massive golden parachute when stock tanks, leave kelloggs, go to another company repeat.

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Post ID: @cqu+MrKKD1m

Exactly, and I feel the same way. At least I won't have the tremendous mental stress and horrible life balance. I'm in my twenties and had a head full of hair before I started. I feel like I could work at a prison and get more respect.

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Post ID: @tpo+MrKKD1m

Spot on!! Top performer here also and this is all correct. My DM and ZSL told me first thing when I walked into the severance meeting "this decision was not based on performance". Obviously not! In my zone they kept the worst performers because of "geography". I was mad at first when I was being let go now I'm happy to finally get out and find a better company to work for. I may take home less in pay depending on what I find, but I feel at peace with finally being let go.

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Post ID: @tnv+MrKKD1m

Well said

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Post ID: @kxl+MrKKD1m

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