Equal opportunity performance (LA11)
The male/female ratio at Tata Steel is 93:7 for 05-06 (compared to 95:5 for 04-05). The female employees pre-dominantly represent worker class and a few in the officer’s cadre. Presently there are no women in the Board of Directors or among top 10 executives of the Company.

STRATEGY & MANAGEMENT - HUMAN RIGHTS
Ensuring human rights (HR1)
Tata Steel has five core values – Trusteeship, Integrity, Respect of Individual, Credibility and Excellence. Based on these values, the Tata Code of Conduct has been created as given in Annexure II. Clause 4 of the Code of Conduct commits Tata Group to be an equal opportunity employer where discrimination of employees based on caste, religion, color etc. should not be done. This clause also emphasizes that the work place should be free of sexual harassment.

To make the Code of Conduct effective, an Ethics Counsellor has been appointed to listen to the grievances of the employees and any violation, if found, is dealt with through the established disciplinary procedure enumerated in the Works Standing Order 1970.

Tata Steel ensures protection of Fundamental Rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. There is an Employee Grievance Redressal Cell in the Human Resource Management Department, which reviews and addresses grievances. The detailed grievance redressal procedure is furnished in Annexure IV.

On-line grievance raising facilities like HOTMAIL, mail@ethics.com have been provided for employees. The complaints received at all the above facilities are looked into and analyzed and proper action taken. To avoid any harassment and retribution to the employees who have raised grievances, a Whistle Blower Protection Policy has been implemented in the Company (as shown in Annexure III). A Whistle Blower Protection Committee headed by senior management at Dy. MD level has been constituted to discuss these issues and take remedial action.

Ensuring human rights by suppliers and contractors (HR 2/HR 3)
Performance of Supplier & Procedure for Monitoring:
The Procurement Division of Tata Steel has designed and deployed formats for Vendor Registration, which comprehensively captures relevant information on the vendor’s processes and its products before the vendor is included in the panel of suppliers. Normally, the vendors are initially included as one time vendors. After the product or services received are found to be acceptable and that the vendor is capable of getting repeat business, only then is the vendor tagged as a long-term vendor. The Procurement Division also captures the financial status (audited balance sheet of last 3 years) of vendors before registration and subsequent information on its economic performance is obtained through various channels e.g. its customers and bankers. If required, a confidential report is obtained from the Vigilance department about the credentials of the vendors before formal registration. It has been made mandatory for vendors to accept the Tata Steel’s Code of Conduct. An IT based system exists for “On Line Acknowledgement of CoC” by suppliers on the Internet at the e-procurement site.

Submission of compliance against various clauses of SA 8000 standard has been made mandatory for all vendors. It has been repeatedly conveyed to all vendors that Tata Steel would not like to have a business relationship with those who do not comply to the norms as laid down in the SA 8000 standard. A yearly plan is drawn up for doing sample audits at vendor’s premises to check compliance. Written commitment from vendors is taken during vendor registration (it is a part of vendor assessment form for new vendor registration). The vendors are subsequently audited based on a protocol developed by M/s Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and audit findings are translated to scores with maximum rating as 100.

Vendor performance is monitored on Price, Quality, and Delivery parameters for suppliers and an additional parameter on Safety performance is also monitored for the service providers. Safety performance is strictly monitored and punitive action is taken promptly against any lapses. We are designing a system to capture the scores of SA 8000 compliance per vendor during their social assessment done by us or through the help of external agencies. This score will appear along with other parameters as cited above in the vendor performance evaluation.

Close monitoring on the compliance with labour laws as regards contractor’s social performance is carried out and defaulters are strictly penalized as per the norms laid out.