SRDC at ArcelorMittal

Journey to Zero represents the committed pursuit of an injury-free, illness-free and healthy workplace. That is why our Corporate Health and Safety team has implemented a Group-wide global programme for good hygiene in the common areas we share in the workplace.


Why is SRDC maintenance important to ArcelorMittal?


From a human perspective, good hygienic conditions in SRDC show respect to our employees and to each other. The contrary is to hurt people's dignity. People should want to work in healthy conditions and our Group should want to offer them.


Hygienic conditions in showers, rest rooms, dressing rooms and canteens are an important part of any good health system, which is something we are placing particular emphasis on at our Company. Our SDRC programme seeks to respect certain standards for every site across our Group, such as maintenance to avoid moisture or other hygienic problems. It also targets areas where we know that some improvement is necessary.


There are multiple benefits for our people and contractors to be gained from general hygiene good habits, such as:

- Hand-washing, which diminishes contamination by flues or other contagious diseases

- Water quality control, which is crucial in a process of avoiding diseases (i.e. Legion Ella prevention in showers, drinking water quality in general)

- Hygienic control in our canteens to prevent food intoxication

- Healthy menus in our canteens as part of a health education system



In addition however, there are specific industry related risks that can be eliminated through the programme. For example, taking a shower after a shift helps to eliminate heavy metal dust particles that could be harmful to a worker's health. If one of our Journey to Zero goals is to eliminate illness, prevention is the place to start.


On request of a Health and Safety BAR meeting, a study was conducted by the Corporate Health and Safety team which highlighted poor hygienic conditions (SRDC) in a lot of sites through own health audits. Based on these findings, the H&S team decided to establish a hygiene standards programme for making improvements and reaching a good quality ArcelorMittal standard at all facilities. They also decided that it had to be rolled out as a matter of priority and that for various sites this had to be backed up by visual proof of the actions taken at each facility to make necessary improvements.


Needful improvements


Health and Safety Day played a part in the programme. A target was set for CEOs to certify that they had done the needful improvements before our global Health and Safety Day held on April 28, 2009. All of our segments received a request to fix their SRDC problems and to use the day for a survey operation for which a specific questionnaire had been prepared. Also, members of our top management were invited to visit SRDC on the day. This offers a good example of how the dedicated day is used in a practical sense and how it can really act as a step along the way of a much larger journey.


And how is the programme working so far? The H&S team says that they are happy with the response to their request as it was very positive - especially from unions. They also received a lot of very good feedback from the sites. People seem to be really getting into the spirit of the programme. Stainless people were the first in introducing all sites' programmes. Big efforts were also shown in AACIS (AM Kazakhstan, Ukraine and South Africa). A full overview of the status of all SRDC should be available very soon.


Mary Carey