Ben & Jerry’s Alleges Unilever Illegally Fired CEO Over Leftist Activism
“Concurrently with their efforts to remove Mr. Stever, Unilever’s suppression of Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission has reached startling new levels of oppressiveness—and irony.”
Ben & Jerry’s has sued Unilever, accusing its parent company of illegally firing CEO Dave Stever on March 3rd over leftist political activism and breaching its contract.
Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000. The company maintained an independent board of directors to continue its far-left political advocacy.
“Unilever’s repeated threats (including to dismantle the Independent Board), inappropriate muzzling, and campaign of professional reprisals are particularly concerning given their simultaneous efforts to restructure the company,” the company wrote in the lawsuit.
Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever had a Settlement Agreement in December 2022 to force the parent company to respect “the Independent Board’s authority over Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Brand Integrity.”
Ben & Jerry’s alleges Unilever started “to spin off Unilever’s ice cream business” to a standalone company and hasn’t worked with the Independent Board.
“To date, Unilever has failed to engage with the Independent Board in good faith regarding how the restructuring will preserve the rights, duties, and obligations specified in the parties’ agreements, including Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Brand Integrity and the Independent Board’s authority over the same,” continued the lawsuit. “Instead, they have repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry’s personnel, encroached on the Independent Board’s authority over the Social Mission, and are now moving to replace those who they deem to have sided with the Independent Board.”
Ben & Jerry’s claims Unilever has consistently threatened the company’s personnel, including Stever, if they did not stop the Social Mission.
Unilever and the head of ice cream, Peter ter Kulve, fired Stever supposedly before consulting and discussing the move with the advisory committee. The two companies signed an agreement for the advisory committee when they merged in 2000.
“On information and belief, Unilever’s motive for removing Mr. Stever is his commitment to Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Essential Brand Integrity and his willingness to collaborate in good faith with the Independent Board, rather than any genuine concerns regarding his performance history,” states Ben & Jerry’s. “Under Mr. Stever’s tenure, Ben & Jerry’s outperformed Unilever’s ice cream portfolio and was ranked #2 on the Brand 500 Authenticity Index in both 2023 and 2024.”
Concurrently with their efforts to remove Mr. Stever, Unilever’s suppression of Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission has reached startling new levels of oppressiveness—and irony. For example, Unilever prevented Ben & Jerry’s—the company that has openly called for “Dismantling White Supremacy”—from issuing a post commemorating Black History Month. And most recently, after Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil was detained by ICE for expressing proPalestine views on a college campus, Unilever blocked Ben & Jerry’s from making the following post: “Protect the First Amendment! Free speech and peaceful protests are the lifeblood of our democracy, and student activists have always been at the center of the fight for justice. Political speech is protected by our constitution and peaceful civil disobedience should never be the basis for deportation. Protect your right to dissent and take action with the @ACLU,” followed by a link to an ACLU petition for Mr. Khalil’s release. Once again, Unilever provided no explanation for the censorship.
In 2018, Ben & Jerry’s embraced antisemite Linda Sarsour to promote its “Resist” ice cream. The money from the ice cream supported the pro-Farrakhan Women’s March and other anti-Trump groups.
In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s chose to boycott the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” including the ancient Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.
The boycott led to a year filled with lawsuits for Unilever.
- Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Israeli Company Sues Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever To Maintain License
- Ben & Jerry’s Sues Corporate Parent Unilever To Thwart Sale Of Branded Ice Cream In Jewish Quarter of Old City, Judea and Samaria
- Ben & Jerry’s Case: Judge Skeptical About Claim Of Irreparable Harm
- Israeli Students Troll Ben & Jerry’s Over Its Occupation Of Abenaki Land (UPDATED)
- Court Denies Ben & Jerry’s Request to Stop Unilever’s Already-Consummated Sale of Ice Cream Maker’s Israeli Business
- Ben & Jerry’s Ends Its Dispute With Unilever Over Ice Cream Brand Sales In Israel
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Comments
Melt down more aholes.
Is a new Butt R Fecan flavor in the offing?
Who?
“… head of ice cream…”
An office for Pelosi to aspire to, if she ever decides to retire.
Never had it, never will.
Nephew of mine worked in one of their distribution warehouses as an early job. Whenever a case of the stuff hit the deck the guys could take it home. I got in the way of quite a bit of quite a bit of it. The stuff never impressed me. I ate it when it was free but would never lay down my own plonk to take some home. Bryers have me when it comes to ice cream.
And as I learned about their politics I even avoided it more. Nut jobs.
They need the Bud Light treatment.
Ben and Jerry look like two guys that had their ice cream taken away.
Dress for one, pitchfork for the other.
I guess they have a hard time with the concept that Unilever bought the company so they own Ben and Jerry’s. They could go there tomorrow, dismiss everyone and shut down the entire company if that’s what the board of Unilever wants to do. That’s the privelege of owning a thing, it’s yours to do with as you please.
Not true. Unilever is not free to do whatever it wants with B&J. They have a contract, and Unilever is bound by it. Unilever bought it in the full knowledge of what that contract entailed, and now it’s trying to get out of it. The board is not required to go along with that.
Maybe Unilever could argue that when it signed the contract it didn’t realize that the independent board it agreed to would go the whole nazi and throw the brand’s goodwill behind genocide against Jews. But by the time it signed the settlement a few years ago, agreeing that the Israeli licensee would not be allowed to use B&J’s name or artwork, it knew exactly what it was up against, and agreed to it, because being woke didn’t yet seem like the poison pill it is now. Well, things have changed and it’s stuck in the woke straitjacket that it voluntarily put itself into. Good luck getting out of it now.
The Israeli brand does use the name Ben & Jerry’s but written in Hebrew characters. The 1st year after they bought the franchise they released a limited run kosher l’Pesach charoses (or charoset as we say here) flavor shortly after Purim, They seem to be doing that as an annual thing. I’m looking forward to this year.
My only gripe- only some of their flavors are chalov Yisrael.
Anything made from fresh milk will be CY. The Rabbanut doesn’t allow non-CY fresh milk, but it does allow powdered.
(Explanation: R Moshe was never as influential in Israel as he was in America; while R Hersh-Pesach was much more influential in Israel than in America..)
Because of the confidentiality clauses in that contract, I doubt that anyone but the Unilever and B&J attorneys really know what those terms were. If Unilever wants to sell out the entire unit, most likely it is free to do so, particularly under Dutch law—which is very, very lenient to businesses and not so much concerned with social issues and the feelings of people as it is with profit. Unilever being a Dutch company, they likely could go to a Dutch court, get a ruling allowing itself to divest of a unit that doesn’t fit its product lineup, and that’s that. B&J has proven to be a migraine for its corporate owner, though profitable at one point, now it’s just an albatross. Having worked with Dutch-based pharma companies who have done the same thing, it’s not like there isn’t a whole metric ton of precedence in Dutch law for that to happen, Milhouse. Remember the controlling law would be to its Dutch owner.
B&J’s contract would almost certainly have designated the laws of some US state as the law it’s governed by.
Not interested in supporting Marxist ice cream, even if it is “ranked #2 on the Brand 500 Authenticity Index”.
I hope Unilever breaks them.
I don’t buy their product specifically because of its “authenticity.” When Ben & Jerry’s (why isn’t it “Ben’s & Jerry’s”?) stamps its product as one made by Marxists, it’s not just advertising, it’s “authenticity.”
Nothing screams authenticity like “Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert.”
Not flattering to the Kaepernick flavor, but apt as hell.
And it’s chocolate?!?
Isn’t that racist or something?
It shouldn’t actually be half chocolate and half vanilla, Considering…..
I thought the image was on of a “Kapernick specimen cup”.
It’s not “Ben’s and Jerry’s”, because it didn’t belong to each of them separately. It belonged to both of them together, and that is the correct way to say that.
When visiting friends you don’t say you’re going to “John’s and Linda’s house”; you say “John and Linda’s house”. John and Linda are a couple, and they own the house together.
Someone actually downvoted that? Wow.
You are correct. I know twice in one week I have agreed with you. There is a way out for Unilever. Just give it back. If the Unilever board determines that their company will suffer marketplace displacement due to Ben and Jerry’s social activism the only remedy is cut ties with Ben and Jerry’s. It wouldn’t be the first time a conglomerate gave a division back to the original owners to get rid of a pain in the neck company. B&J are about to find out the meaning of FAFO.
Their ice cream is overpriced anyway. Can’t remember the last time I would have chosen it over a number of other quality, more natural and less costly brands. Spin it back to an independent company and let it succeed of fail on its own merits.
It isn’t as good as it used to be either.
I break down and buy it from time to time when it is half priced.
When you put your “Social Mission” ahead of your customers, you should be fired. We buy specialty ice cream all the time, but will not consider B&J because of their “in your face” politics. It looks like Unilever has gotten sick of it.
When you have a contract specifically allowing you to put your “social mission” ahead of everything you can’t be fired for it. I well understand Unilever getting sick of it; what took it so long? But it’s the one that signed the sickening contract.
These idiots don’t know what the word“oppression” means. Protecting your business’s profit margin from morons.
Still waiting for them to give their headquarters back to the Indians who owned the land…
Never had their ice cream. Is it any good?
So people say. I wouldn’t know.
I enjoyed it. I won’t eat it these days but I’m in Israel so it’s not an issue for me. But there’s no argument over flavor & aroma.
Ben and Jerry’s is pretty good and the Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is my favorite ice cream but I have not had it in years as I don’t agree with their politics which have gone way off the rails. I’ve toured the plant in Waterbury and met both Ben and Jerry a number of times. Both are pretty nice guys much like Bernie Sanders who I’ve also met several times. Disagree with all of them. The corporate stuff is very complicated.
Not complicated at all. As Michal Jordan once said: “Republicans buy shoes too.” Alienating half or more of your customer base is plain stupid, especially if you are a public company.
I didn’t mean it like that. I meant the Unilever buyout and the contract with stipulations and stuff. It gets in the weeds especially with overseas distributors.
Is Ben & Jerry’s ice cream good? Perhaps it is, perhaps it’s not, but in a crowded marketplace, why would I give money to a company that hates me for my core beliefs?
Unilever must kick themselves each morning that they agreed to buy B&J. The brand is toxic and the management agreement is like having a squatter in a rental unit – they aren’t paying and they’re destroying the place. Not only that, I’d posit that B&J is not congruous with their other brands either.
If I were Unilever’s CEO, I’d allow them to die on the vine, just like Marxists like to do to their victims.
B&J is not congruous with their other brands
Unilever was one of the last to slip into wokeness, I think, but it did. (Or it allowed some brands to do so, outside of B&J.) I gave up a soap because of it – as you say, not wanting to give my money to someone interested in using that money to push Progressive causes.
I do think their statement about “suppressing our social mission” is trying to pull a fast one. I know that’s the contract language to some extent, but it seems like they’re trying to make it sound like “free speech.” Oh, it’s not, and they’re not actually claiming it is, but this is a company built entirely on marketing, and it just sounds to me like they’re trying to set an idea in people’s heads so they will boo the parent company into submission.
Don’t like their over priced ice cream and their leftist stance.
HÄAGEN-DAZS knows what time it is. Born in Brooklyn.
Now that’s Åuthentisitet!
Yes, but the Mattuses sold it more than 40 years ago. It’s now owned by Nestle, I think.
Mrs Mattus later got back into the ice cream business with her own small-scale artisinal brand, but it was more a hobby than a business and I think it died when she did. (I met her once; she seemed very nice.)
Those 2 hippy idiots advocated for the release of a twice convicted killer of a young, married Philadelphia Police Officer, Daniel Faulkner. The scum stood over him and shot him in the face. I won’t even look at their crap in the freezer case.
Fantastic…keep up the good work Unilever; you cannot purge these aholes fast enough.
We make our own ice cream! It’s better than the store-bought stuff and definitely doesn’t contained all of the carrageenan or other stabilizing gums that used to keep the stuff from melting—those aren’t ice creams, they’re frozen goop!
What’s wrong with carrageenan? It’s just seaweed, isn’t it?
Aren’t Ben AND Jerry Jews?
Yes. But it doesn’t seem to mean anything to them; they seem to regard it as a mere accident of birth, and it doesn’t seem to affect their views on anything.
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