Breakthrough health and safety agreement at Danone Russia

The IUF Russian affiliates AIWU and Novoprof have taken a significant step towards raising health and safety standards at Danone facilities throughout Russia in a newly-signed agreement.

The agreement builds on the international agreement on health, safety and stress between the IUF and Danone. It reaffirms Danone’s commitment to provide a safe and healthy workplace and ensures the involvement of trade union representatives in joint work with management to identify preventive health and safety measures and in procedures that follow significant lost-time workplace accidents. Each such accident will now be immediately followed by an investigation carried out by joint teams made up of relevant management, workers and their union representatives. Critically the agreement ensures that these joint teams will in future be constructed with parity between the number of management representatives and workers’ representatives (past practice had been only one worker representative on a team made up of significantly more management representatives).

Establishing these processes jointly with trade unions through this agreement marks significant progress in management/union relations in Danone Russia, where there has been a history of serious tensions around union recognition and collective bargaining rights. IUF members in Russia now look forward to continued advances in relation to union recognition, collective bargaining rights and the provision of information necessary for meaningful collective bargaining.