Redditโs r/antiwork is typically filled with horror stories that make you want to quit not just your own job but strangersโ jobs, too.
โMy boss suggested I might not be able to take forty minutes to see my daughters [sic] first ever school play, so I told him try not to be a cartoon villain and he hung up on me,โ reads one post from earlier this month. โThatโs permission to take the whole afternoon off, right?โ the post concludes.
The underlying ethos of r/antiwork isnโt just to be a place to ventโitโs to push back on the idea of work as we know it. So it might seem counterintuitive that on Thursday, a thread blew up that was urging members to apply for jobs.
The jobs in question are permanent positions at Kelloggโs cereal plants in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Tennessee. The goal was to overwhelm the system with fake applications, making it a nightmare for recruiters to sort through.
Members of r/antiwork were aligning with the 1,400 Kelloggโs workers who went on strike more than two months ago over stalled union negotiations with the company. Kelloggโs announced this week that it would hire permanent replacement workers after those on strike voted to reject a tentative agreement with management.
โItโs very easy to empathize with the Kelloggโs workers,โ says Kevin McKenzie, a moderator of r/antiwork. Hearing Kelloggโs workers talk about being overworked, being paid low wages, and having a poor work-life balance resonates with others, he says. โIt lights a fire in the community, and you get ideas like this that spring up and get supported.โ
Kelloggโs didnโt respond to a request for comment.
Threads on r/antiwork compile timelines of the Kellogg strike, lists of products made by Kellogg to boycott, and links to the jobs that would replace striking workers. At the time of writing, the main thread encouraging subreddit members to flood the system with fake applications had more than 62,000 upvotes and thousands of comments. In another, members share tips on how to use features like autofill to submit applications faster.
The striking workers are aware of the efforts, says Corrina Christensen, director of communications for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millersโ International Union, which represents the Kelloggโs employees.
โItโs phenomenal,โ she says.
Earlier this week, Reddit highlighted r/antiwork as being โthe poster child for the great resignation.โ According to the company, the subreddit has grown by 279 percent in membership between 2020 and 2021, now home to 1.3 million members. The fourth most upvoted post of 2021 was a thread on r/antiwork of someone unceremoniously quitting their job.
Any organizing around flashpoints like the Kelloggโs strike is member-driven, says McKenzie. McKenzie is a graduate social work student in South Carolina who says the philosophy of antiwork resonates with him personally: he holds down multiple jobs and internships while in school, and at times, work has taken over his life.
โThatโs why this kind of action gets popular,โ McKenzie says. โEverybody feels the struggle, and the pain, and the misery that these Kellogg workers feel right now.โ
Moderators pinned a post with suggestions on how to support the strike, including flooding the job postings, but otherwise have let members take the lead. McKenzie says some members reported the job site crashing throughout the day, and the initiative has now spread to Twitter and TikTok, introducing new people to the r/antiwork community.
Itโs not the first time antiwork messages broke out of digital spaces. Last week, a slew of posts on social media suggested receipt printers were being hacked to spit out pro-worker manifestos, encouraging people to discuss wages with co-workers and form unions, eventually directing people to visit r/antiwork. McKenzie says the moderation team doesnโt know whoโs responsible for the hacked printers โ they originally thought the stunt was fake.
Now some in the antiwork community see organizing around the Kelloggโs strike as an important way to turn their shared beliefs into real-world actions.
โItโs time for r/antiwork to make the news as a formidable fighter for the average worker,โ one post reads. โI submitted four applications. How many did you submit?โ