lockouts

The workers Kellogg locked out last October after their union refused to accept wage cuts and other concessions are back on the job thanks to a federal judge's ruling that the National Labor Relations Board was right to seek an injunction against the company for serious violations of federal labor law.

The National Labor Relations Board has filed a formal complaint that accuses the cereal giant of breaking the law by locking out 226 unionized workers at its Memphis plant since last October.

Kellogg's profits are up. So why has the breakfast cereal giant locked out workers at its factory in Memphis, a city that has been the site of other historic labor struggles?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis while speaking out for striking sanitation workers. The civil rights community is once again rallying behind struggling workers in the city -- this time, union employees who were locked out of the Kellogg cereal factory, where the workforce is majority African-American.

The number of workplaces with egregiously bad safety records has doubled in the past year. OSHA's effort to focus on these employers is laudable -- but is it enough?