OREANDA-NEWS. “Everyone, from directors and managers, to employees and subcontractors, must be committed to protecting their own health and safety, and that of others”. It is with this in mind that Gerard Mestrallet, Chairman and CEO of GDF SUEZ, and the global union federations of industrial and energy workers (IndustriALL) of the building (BWI) and public services (PSI) sectors signed in Chile an agreement to strengthen and extend worldwide the workplace health and safety commitments GDF SUEZ made many years ago at the European level.

A previous global agreement was reached in 2010 on fundamental rights, social dialogue, and sustainable development. This second agreement is based on the strong commitment of the Group's senior management for its social policy to be in line with the Group's core values: Drive, Commitment, Daring and Cohesion. It bears witness to the importance of social dialogue at GDF SUEZ.

With this agreement, GDF SUEZ commits to concrete progress goals for the elimination of fatal accidents with causal links to the Group's businesses, to a reduction in the number of workplace accidents, and to continuous improvement of workplace health by eliminating products containing substitutable toxic substances (especially carcinogenic, mutagenic, and reprotoxic substances).

There is a particular focus on health and safety issues for subcontracted work, both for the staff of those companies and third parties, through risk assessments and contractual obligations for subcontracting companies, including monitoring and verification of action plans.

For Gerard Mestrallet, Chairman and CEO of GDF SUEZ, “The signature of this new global agreement is a chance to reaffirm our deep conviction that a lasting industrial development plan must take social and human aspects into account. GDF SUEZ is committed to making the health and safety of everyone a permanent priority. This commitment must be affirmed everywhere the Group works, without distinguishing between countries or businesses. It is key to the commitments that we took with global union federations in November 2010 when we signed the “Global agreement on fundamental rights, social dialogue, and sustainable development”. With this latest agreement, we hope to strengthen and extend the earlier initiatives our Group took in workplace health and safety with our European social partners”.