Unilever the home of such major trusted global brands as Magnum, Liptons, Hellmann's, Flora, Knorr, Ben & Jerry's etc..... increasingly allows those trusted brands to be manufactured by workers and management who are not permanent Unilever employees or even not in Unilever factories. We call this the "The vanishing Unilever worker".

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The vanishing Unilever worker

In Pakistan Unilever has recently claimed, "The company employs directly or indirectly more than 8,000 people in 5 factories and offices throughout the country". All presumably making Unilever branded products. Our first question is not what are they earning, how are they treated, what working conditions do they face.....but simply where are these workers? It's a more serious question than the consumer might think! In the Khanewal Unilever Tea factory only 22 workers are Unilever workers - the other 98% - 1,000 - work for labour hire firms - none of which have global reputations to worry about. At the Unilever Walls Ice Cream facility in Lahore there are four times more permanent workers than in Khanewal - 89 in truth - but 750 workers who are not. At the Lipton Tea factory in Karachi there were still more permanent workers, 122 this time - but again dwarfed by those who are not, numbering as they do 450. But the story of the Lipton Tea factory in Karachi does not end there.....

Disappearing workers and now disappearing factories?

On August 31 the Lipton Tea Karachi factory was closed and all production transferred to a third party producer (a "co-packer") not in any way run by Unilever. there are no permanent workers at all they all work for fourth-party or fifth-party labour hire firms. So disappearing workers and vanishing factories and yet product still sold under respected Unilever brands. Perhaps they should come clean and market them as "Lipton hybrid tea", "Walls hybrid ice cream", "Flora hybrid spread", "Knorr hybrid soups" or "Hellmann's hybrid mayonnaise" - but of course they don't! The consumer might react to the fact that these branded products were made by anything other than permanent Unilever workers in Unilever factories directed by Unilever managers and accountable to Unilever headquarters, the supposed guardians of Unilever's many global brands and the standing guarantors of those brands' integrity and trustworthiness.

The IUF Challenge to Unilever: Come clean, back up the brand or market Lipton/Walls/Flora/Knorr/Hellmann's etc as "hybrids"!

As we have done with the world's largest food company Nestle, the IUF is challenging Unilever to come clean with consumers and call their brand Unilever "hybrid" with the "hybrid" meaning product made by non-permanent or non-existent Unilever workers or made in non-Unilever facilities. If not then we call on Unilever to take a close look at their employment practices so they can guarantee that branded Unilever products are made in Unilever facilities by Unilever workers and managers on decent and permanent Unilever work contracts.

Failure to do so will see consumers increasingly misled and increasingly putting their faith in brands that should truthfully not be called "Lipton", "Magnum", Ben & Jerry's", "Flora", "Knorr" or Hellmann's but rather all be branded "hybrids". Unilever's leaders and their investors know the "hybrid" is not what consumers think they are paying for when they buy those brands! They pay for and rightly or wrongly trust the brands. IUF members whose jobs and whose families' welfare depend on that consumer confidence understand that only too well. Is it too much to expect the same of Unilever's talented leaders?