Boycott Streets ice-cream

Workers at the Minto Streets ice-cream factory on Sunday launched a boycott of the brand’s products. The boycott is a last resort response to an ongoing dispute between workers and the Dutch-British multinational company Unilever, who own Streets.

Earlier this year the company applied to terminate the Enterprise Agreement, forcing workers back onto the award and giving them a 46% pay-cut.

This cut is a devastating blow to the over 100 workers at the factory. These are people with mortgages and families. They relied on Streets paying them fair wages to support themselves and their children.

Streets ice-cream was once as Aussie as the fair go. But there is nothing Australian about ripping-off workers by 46%.

The Collieries’ Staff and Officials Association, along with the broader union movement, is standing with the workers at the Minto Streets Factory in boycotting the ice-cream brand.

Sound familiar?

Just last year Griffin Coal in Western Australia similarly applied to the Fair Work Commission and succeeded in terminating their existing Enterprise Agreement which covered over 70 workers.

The workers at the mine received a 43% pay-cut as the cancelling of their Agreement forced them back onto the Black Coal Mining Industry Award.

We are increasingly seeing wage-theft being used as a business-model.

The rules which govern our workplace relations are clearly broken when employers can use the Fair Work Commission to attack workers’ rights and pay.

Both Streets and Griffin Coal represent a very dangerous precedent. We cannot let employers to continue getting away with this behaviour.

We can’t stand for this in mining or in any other industry. Now is the time to change the rules.

Participate in this boycott to send a firm message to greedy billion-dollar companies that Australian workers will not cop this.

Join with us and have a Streets Free Summer.

Streets Products to avoid

Products to avoid are Magnum, Golden Gaytime, Paddle Pop, Cornetto, Splice, Calippo, Bubble O’Bill, Blue Ribbon, and Vienetta.

We highly encourage you to switch to competitor brands like Peters Ice-Cream (Maxibon, Drumstick, Connoisseur etc), Bulla Dairy Foods and Zooper Doopers.

If you have kids asking for a Streets Paddle Pop this summer, then now could be the perfect time to talk to them about fairness.

Tell them about the other kids just like them whose parents work at the Minto factory and who rely on fair wages to support their family.