European Social Partners, COTANCE and the industriAll-European Trade Union have launched a new project, ‘Due Diligence for Healthy Workplaces in the Tanning Industry’, within the framework of the EU support programme for social dialogue.

The collaborative project  includes UNIC (Italy), VDL (Germany), ACEXPIEL (Spain), FFTM (France), UKLF (UK), APPBR (Romania) and SG (Sweden) and has three objectives:

• to conduct a EU survey on current practices for the identification and reporting of concerns regarding workplace health and safety conditions in tanneries along the leather value chain

• to update the OiRA on-line Risk Assessment tool of the tanning sector

• the organisation of a public Final Conference in the second half of 2018 where the results of the project will be widely disseminated.            

Europe’s tanning industry has been working to address workplace accidents and sub-standard working conditions for over two decades, notably on the nature of the instruments used for assessing, reporting, demonstrating and certifying due diligence along the leather supply chain.

In February, the industry adopted the new ‘Guidelines on Due Diligence for Responsible Supply Chains in the Garment and Footwear sector’ developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).