Last month, a strike at a FritoLay factory in Kansas captured America’s attention. The story went viral for its shocking details about the appalling factory conditions: Workers told news outlets about 84-hour work weeks, 12-hour back-to-back shifts with only a few hours off, employees who hadn’t received a raise after working at the factory for 10 years – and, of course, extremely low wages.

So the workers at FritoLay banded together to strike – even though Kansas is one of the country’s most anti-union states, with notoriously bad so-called “right to work” laws. As soon as the strike began, the company took away health insurance from striking workers – in the middle of the pandemic.  

But the strikers carried on, and after three weeks of significant media attention, they reached an agreement: a 4% pay increase, one guaranteed day off per week, and no back-to-back 12-hour shifts. 

While the FritoLay strikers made some progress, it’s not the fairytale ending we had hoped for. The company can still demand overtime from its workers with very few restrictions. Plus, the 4% raise isn’t nearly enough to cut down on income inequality within the company. The CEO of PepsiCo, which owns FritoLay, made $21.5 million last year – 460 times the median PepsiCo worker salary.

But there’s cause for hope: On our Pitchfork Economics podcast, I spoke with Jason Probst, a Democratic member of the Kansas House of Representatives. Probst explained that during the FritoLay strike, Americans boycotted the company and supported the strikers. He sees this as a sign that the general public will no longer support exploitative labor practices.

Probst believes that Americans are “tired of giving up their lives for substandard wages and sacrificing their quality of life so that somebody else can make outsize profits” – and I couldn’t agree more!

That’s why it should be illegal for companies like PepsiCo to bust unions, take away health care as retaliation – and treat their employees so poorly in the first place. We hope that Americans are finally on the side of the everyday worker – and not a handful of exploitative, millionaire CEOs.

We’re running a live poll to find out what Americans REALLY think about companies like PepsiCo, and we need more responses from DC today. Please, tell us now:

Should every company be legally required to pay their workers a livable wage, assign reasonable shifts, provide guaranteed time off, and ensure humane working conditions?

Thanks for supporting our mission to build a stronger economy from the middle out.

Paul Constant