The fight to save quality jobs at Mondelez Dunedin, New Zealand

The IUF-affiliated union E tu has worked tirelessly with community leaders to save quality jobs at Mondelez and is highly critical of the final decision by the company to move all production of Cadbury products at its Dunedin, New Zealand production plant to Australia. This decision also follows an IUF urgent action that many IUF affiliated members took part in to support their brothers and sisters from E tu in New Zealand.

E tu’s Director of Industries, Neville Donaldson says the decision will be bitterly disappointing for Cadbury’s Dunedin workers, who had hoped some jobs might be saved. E tu further questions whether Mondelez was ever serious about finding a 3rd party local manufacturer.

A New Zealand based company, Rainbow, had been in negotiations with Mondelez to make certain products after the Dunedin plant closure. Rainbow commented in a recent news story, “‘there is nothing special about the manufacturing process that through minimal investment we could have not have achieved.'”

Yet again, Mondelez has disappointed a community and has decided to move production to cut costs. Dunedin has lost more than 1,200 full-time, well-paid manufacturing jobs in recent years through a string of factory closures. All Mondelez leaves behind is the tourist attraction ‘Cadbury World’ employing 35 mostly part-time workers– a bitter reminder of the Cadbury factory that commenced manufacturing chocolate in Dunedin in 1884 and employed over 300 workers prior to the closure.