Workers Safety
Background
Because the extraction and processing of minerals can lead to possible hazards, workers’ health and safety have been at the core of IMA-Europe’s concerns and activities since its creation in 1993. The Association promotes risk prevention, particularly the elimination of accidents at work (falls from height, injuries while handling, lifting or carrying, contacts with machinery, etc.).
Why is it important?
Ensuring safe working conditions is of primary importance to the industrial minerals industry. There is nothing more important for industrial minerals producers than the health and safety of their workers. Every worker must be able to go to work and return home safely.
Our views
The industrial minerals industry is committed to ‘Zero Harm’ and promotes the monitoring, reporting, reviewing, and improvement of health and safety performance in all its member companies. Excellence in safety will only be made possible through the involvement of all.
To this aim, IMA-Europe has been collecting data on accidents at work statistics in the sector over the last ten years, and Members committed to a Target Zero Injury in 2011.
This Target Zero Injury strategy is designed around four pillars:
- Commit IMA-Europe companies’ top management,
- Reinforce data collection to reach 100% reporting,
- Exchange experiences: anonymous company safety alerts (on serious and fatal accidents) will be shared between members with recommendations on how to prevent them,
- Organise IMA-Europe Safety Awards, rewarding companies showing the best improvement performances in safety.
Since 2006, IMA-Europe is also a partner of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work Campaigns (see Osha-EU Healthy Workplaces). The current campaign is dedicated to the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders.