Over two months ago, over 1,400 Kellogg’s cereal plant workers from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Tennessee went on strike over stalled union negotiants with the food brand. This week, Kellogg’s announced that they would be hiring permanent replacements for striking workers. This comes after the striking workers voted against coming to a tentative agreement proposed by Kellogg’s management.

In retaliation and in solidarity with the workers on strike, users on the r/antiwork subreddit are submitting and spamming fake job applications for the replacement job portal. A subreddit is a thread of posts related to a particular subject and posts can be ‘upvoted’ or ‘downvoted’. A post about spamming the scab application portal received more than 62,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. A moderator on the subreddit gave a comment and said:

“That’s why this kind of action gets popular,”“Everybody feels the struggle, and the pain, and the misery that these Kellogg workers feel right now.”

Kevin McKenzie, Moderator of r/antiwork

Digital activism isn’t new in this online community, but it’s the first time it has been to this scale. The online company itself, Reddit, commended users for their support and efforts for the striking workers. They also reported that over the year 2020 to 2021, the subreddit had grown by 279%, now with over 1.3 million users following it.

Sato, M. “Redditors are spamming Kellogg’s job portal to support striking workers” (10, December 2021). The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/10/22827990/antiwork-reddit-kelloggs-jobs-portal-spam-solidarity-workers-strike-subreddit