One month ago, roughly 1,400 workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants across the country went on strike. The workers at the four facilities — in Battle Creek, Michigan (the company’s hometown and site of its headquarters); Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Memphis, Tennessee; and Omaha, Nebraska — opposed the company’s offer on a new five-year contract.

The key issue is Kellogg’s desire to expand a two-tier system in the contract. The workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM), a union that has struck at both Frito-Lay and Nabisco in recent months. They say the company’s desire to expand the contract’s tiers would undermine their union by pitting workers against one another while also placing a target on the back of those workers slotted into the higher tier, as the company would see them as a cost in need of cutting.

The specifics of how this works are as follows: in a previous contract, workers agreed to the creation of a “transitional” class of employees who receive lower pay and benefits. That category is capped at 30 percent of the workforce, a means of keeping Kellogg’s from simply hiring more and more lower-cost workers. But in the latest negotiations, the company is pushing to lift that cap, all but ensuring the company will steadily phase out the livable wages and benefits current workers have secured in favor of transforming Kellogg’s jobs into low-paid work.