Labor, Management Prepare to Proceed in Global Forum

Several ARCC companies, unions will join in Canada meeting

In developments relating to the Global Chlorine Chemistry Forum, a number of U.S., Canadian, British, European and Japanese company and union leaders reportedly plan to meet in Canada this Fall to discuss joint actions related to the chemical industry's Responsible Care® program.

Pending resolution of key Labor-Management issues, Forum-related activity had been on hold following the first Forum meeting in Brussels, Belgium in October 1997 and a subsequent meeting of the Forum's steering committee in Washington DC in January 1998.

"The Responsible Care program needs the support of workers and their union representatives to succeed at the plant level," said an international labor official. "It should be harmonized globally so that all plants can work toward the highest possible levels of environment, health and safety performance," he continued. Today, Canada and the United States are the only two countries that have harmonized their Responsible Care codes.

Chemical industries in over 40 countries have established Responsible Care programs in the ten years since the first program was initiated in Canada. "Responsible Care is a work in progress," said an industry Responsible Care official. "In the United States, Responsible Care has been a driving force behind the chemical industry's 50 percent pollution reduction in just 10 years and improved worker safety. At this stage, different countries understand and apply Responsible Care in different ways. We want to establish greater harmonization among national industries," he said.

Responsible Care will be the topic of the upcoming International Labor Organization's (ILO) Chemical Industries meeting in Geneva on February 22-26, 1999, which will address "voluntary initiatives" on worker health, safety and environment. "We hope by that time to have concrete examples of labor-management cooperation in place," the official said.

As reported last December in ARCC News #5, the Forum consists of Labor, Management, and Public Interest representatives. In Brussels, it had been agreed that the Forum would be steered by five major international organization representatives from each of the three groups. The Forum is also structured to encourage participation by smaller organizations and will include up to 25 representatives for each group during full Forum meetings.

The Labor group is chaired by the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) representing over 20 million organized workers worldwide. Management is chaired by the World Chlorine Council (composed of national business associations such as the Chlorine Chemistry Council in the U.S., Euro Chlor in Europe, and the Japan Soda Industry Association) representing the vast majority of chlorine chemistry capacity. The Forum's Public Interest sector steering group, not yet fully constituted, is chaired by Greenpeace on an interim basis. World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland has also been invited to sit on the Public Interest steering committee.