Human Rights Management
We, as KORDSA, operate in compliance with Universal Declaration of Human Rights in all countries we carry a business in, and abide with all laws and regulations and look after all rights of our employees by adopting the international declarations, fundamentals, conventions and principles that our country is a party to. Our approach towards our people is honest and fair. We commit to provide a non-discriminatory working environment for all, making sure that our people enjoy their employee rights fully and properly. We supervise suppliers and subcontractors in our value chain to protect human rights through Supplier Sustainability Evaluation Survey and our contracts.
At Kordsa, continuity in providing a fair working environment for our employees is among our priorities. All employment practices, including but not limited to, recruitment, placing, promotion- transfer-rotation, cancellation of labor contract, dismissals, leaves, wages, extra payments, social rights, and trainings are carried out in a non-discriminatory way, leaving out all views of language, race, gender, political view, philosophical belief, religion, doctrine, real or perceived disabilities. Forced or involuntary labor and child labor are strictly prohibited across all Kordsa sites.
Our Policy
Kordsa Code of Business Ethics is our company’s guiding policy for human and employment rights. In addition, we prepared Kordsa Human Rights Policy in 2018, which supports The Code of Business Ethics. The policy is valid for all Kordsa companies, sites and suppliers. The policy is reviewed by the Ethics Committee as needed, and amendments can be made by the Board of Directors. The coordination of the policy is under the responsibility of the Global Ethical Compliance Officer.
Risk and Impact Assessment of Suppliers
Kordsa Code of Business Ethics and Human Rights Policy are embedded in the contracts with main suppliers. All employees of the subcontractors are informed by Kordsa officers on the codes of work and ethics on their first day at work.
Since there is no article that limits subcontractor employees to join a union, all employees are free to associate. Kordsa audits whether the subcontractor employees have social insurance, they are older than 18, and their wages and social insurance contributions are paid. In case of a complaint, our employees conduct on-site audit with the supplier.
Measuring and Evaluation
Employees who feel or suspect a violation of our fair working environment must notify their line managers, a member of Executive Leas Team, the Local Code of Ethics Consultant, the Global Ethical Compliance Officer or the Ethics Committee through ethics line. In addition, human rights risks and complaints in the company are audited both internally and externally by third parties.
Audit and Reporting
The Internal Audit Department conducts human rights and ethics policy compliance audits integrated in process audits. When there is a declaration regarding violation of Kordsa Code of Ethics, all necessary controls and audits are handled with the help of Local Ethical Compliance Officers.
After determining one or two topics regarding human resources each year, all our companies are audited by Sabancı Holding Audit Committee and Kordsa Audit Committee. A report is presented to the CEO and Board of Directors annually which includes ethics, human rights and human resources topics.
Audit findings are fed into Internal Audit Task Management (IATASK) system and supervisors are assigned tasks. At the end of a year, audit team conducts a follow-up visit in order to audit previous year findings and the actions taken. If the audit is successfully completed, all actions are closed in the system by audit team approval.
Consultation and Training
As Kordsa, we give ethics training to all our new employees. Like all employees, our security staff is also trained on code of ethics which include our human rights policies upon recruitment. These trainings are conducted through KEEP e-learning platform in Turkey, Thailand, and Indonesia. In Brazil and USA, ethics trainings are done in classroom. Our CEO conveys awareness messages across all organizations in case an issue is spotted against ethics code depending on the type of the incident.
Our 2019 Performance
We have not received any complaints regarding human rights violations or discriminative practices at any of our locations in the reporting period. On top of new hires, 167 employees received ethics training that includes human rights topics in 2019. In function meetings following the Global Leadership Summit, we provided ethics training to local human resources managers, local ethics consultants and legal staff. This training informed them about deployment of ethics and compliance culture throughout the organization and internal investigations.
In Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil, the ratio of total number of employees under any type of collective agreement with respect to total number of blue-collar workers has reached 55% in 2019, totaling to 2,004 employees. Our employees in USA, Thailand and China are not unionized. There has been no incidence of violation for freedom of association in 2019. Our operations do not bear any apparent and significant risk concerning these issues.
