Seventeen Nebraska lawmakers voiced support for Kellogg’s cereal workers on strike at the company’s Omaha plant and elsewhere.

The senators said last Thursday that they sent a letter to Kellogg’s CEO and the company’s labor contract negotiating team to show “unwavering solidarity” with the unionized workers.

The letter asks Kellogg’s to continue to work in good faith to ensure that employees are compensated with wages and benefits that match their work and dedication to the company. It also encourages the company to look at newly enacted Nebraska state tax incentives which were designed to help local companies expand.

The letter was signed by 14 Democrats and 17 Republicans in the officially nonpartisan Legislature and spearheaded by state Sen. Mike McDonnell, a former Omaha fire chief and firefighters’ union president.

A summer of labor unrest at U.S. food manufacturers has stretched into fall, as pandemic-weary workers continue to strike for better pay. Around 1,400 workers at Kellogg Co.’s U.S. cereal plants walked off the job last week, saying negotiations with the company over pay and benefits are at an impasse. Kellogg says this is the first time its U.S. cereal workers have gone on strike since 1972.

But after a difficult 18 months, which saw many workers putting in 12-hour shifts and mandatory overtime to meet pandemic demand, employees are in no mood to compromise.

“We’re drawing a line in the sand,” said Rob Long, a production mechanic who has worked at Kellogg’s Omaha plant for 11 years. Kellogg workers are also striking in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Long said he and others are upset about a two-tiered system of employees that gives fewer benefits and less pay to newer workers, creating a wedge within the ranks. Long said the company wants to get rid of a provision that currently caps the lower tier of workers at 30% of the workforce.

After decades of watching companies chip away at pay and benefits, food workers sense that they have a rare upper hand in the wake of the pandemic, says Patricia Campos-Medina, the executive director of The Worker Institute at ILR Cornell.

Labor shortages mean companies can’t easily find replacements for food-production workers, she said. And the pandemic put a spotlight on the essential — and sometimes dangerous — nature of their work.

“Workers in general are demanding that companies invest more in the workforce and not just use the profits for the shareholders,” she said.

Kris Bahner, Kellogg’s senior vice president for global corporate affairs, says the company’s compensation and benefits are already among the industry’s best. The company, which is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, says its longer-term employees made an average of $120,000 last year and $118,000 in 2019, and its proposed contract would shift newer workers to those higher wage rates over six years.

Workers on the picket line in Omaha say they’re routinely working 74- to 84-hour weeks to earn that money. Some workers said they’ve endured 12-hour shifts seven days a week throughout the pandemic, with only a few minutes’ notice about mandatory overtime.

“We do make good money, but we’ve given up a lot,” said Dan Jourdan, a packing machine operator who has worked at Kellogg since 2001. “If we worked just 40 hours a week, we’d make nowhere near that kind of wage.”