In 2016, over 500 National Union of Workers (NUW) members at Polar Fresh — the major cold storage distribution warehouse for Australia’s largest supermarket, Coles — went on strike. The strike made use of secondary boycott tactics, drawing on the solidarity of other warehouse workers to ensure that the supermarket giant couldn’t outsource the work to others.

Conspicuous gaps quickly appeared on Coles shelves across Victoria and beyond. In three days of striking, the workers secured victory. In a dramatic backdown, Polar Fresh was forced to create 120 new, secure jobs while also granting workers employed indirectly by labor-hire agencies the right to convert to directly employed, permanent positions. A year on, and with no jobs lost, the number of casual workers at the warehouse has fallen from 170 to 30. Paid breaks, registered days off, double pay for any overtime beyond two hours, and a pay raise of $4 per hour over four years were also won.

Bosses at Coles and Polar Fresh were incensed by the strike — and they weren’t the only ones. The state’s peak body for agribusiness, the Victorian Farmers Federation, also condemned the strike. Its members were outraged at the thought of their produce rotting in trucks while workers blockaded cold storage facilities across Melbourne.