The Mondelez-owned chocolate-maker, Cadbury has recently announced plans to shed 40 jobs from its Hobart factory, in Tasmania, Australia. As per credible sources, Mondelez said that it will be replacing its redundant workers with new high-performance machineries worth USD 20 million, used for precisely wrapping Cadbury’s products such as the Flake and Twirl bars.
According to The Daily Mail, Ross Coleman, factory site manager, had been quoted stating that certain product lines such as Twirl and Flake needed to be produced efficiently for the company to remain price-competitive in the global chocolate market.
Incidentally, the facility also has to overcome challenges associated with Australian production such as rising cost of freight, distant location and low domestic growth. Planned job cuts would help Cadbury overcome some of these challenges by reducing surplus company cost, said Coleman.
Sources suggest that the 40 shed out jobs would represent 10% of Cadbury’s current workforce and will raise the total number of job cuts to 170 since the year 2015.
Disappointed with the firm’s decision, John Short, State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union said that there have been generations of families who have worked at the Claremont, Hobart factory and the ongoing shift towards machine automation will eventually decrease availability of well-paid, secured jobs for future generations.
Sources close to the matter claim that the shift would particularly affect older workers, as finding new jobs would be much more difficult. Moreover, the union believes that the international food giant Mondelez is seeking to casualise its workforce.
For the record, in 2015, Cadbury had shed 80 jobs after experiencing a drop in sales in the more internationally competitive chocolate market. In 2017, the company had further slashed another 50 jobs, by claiming it to be a part of its USD 75 million machine automation upgrade and staff training program.
