Tata Steel’s Works in Jamshedpur has been conferred the prestigious Social Accountability (SA) 8000 Certification by Social Accountability International (SAI), USA today. With this certification Tata Steel became the only Steel Company in the world to receive this certificate. SA 8000 certification is a global verifiable standard for managing the work place in a most effective manner by improving the work place conditions.

A worldwide standard modeled after ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, SA 8000 deals with ethical sourcing of goods and services. The origins of SA 8000 lie in ensuring compliance to International Labour Organization (ILO) and human and child rights conventions. In petitioning for certification, applicant entities must demonstrate commitment to the standard’s nine requirements which include prohibition of child and forced labour and ensuring a workplace that is discrimination, harassment and exploitation-free.

In addition to management-worker participation and representation in review committees from apex to grassroots levels, the SA system includes health and safety provisions. SA 8000 stipulates freedom of association, which is already deep-rooted in Tata Steel. Recently, the Company celebrated 75 years of industrial harmony reiterating the above stated. The 97-year old Tata Steel has many other firsts to its credit in human resource management including the institutionalizing of eight-hour workday (1912), leave with pay (1920), and pension scheme (1983) well ahead of industrial practices.

The certification comes in death centenary year of the company’s founder, J. N. Tata, whose vision finds reaffirmation in Tata Steel’s Social Accountability Policy. Signed by MD, B. Muthuraman in December 2003, the policy articulates the company’s continuous commitment to improving the
quality of life not just of its stakeholders but also in positively influencing its partners in ensuring the well-being of their own employees and communities. Notably, Tata Steel’s Sukinda mines in 2004 became the first mining operation ever to be certified to SA 8000.