Global labor and social standards

• Alignment with U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
• Adjusted management process for monitoring adherence to labor and social standards

Our voluntary commitment to respecting international labor and social standards is embedded in our global Code of Conduct. This encompasses internationally recognized labor norms as stipulated in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy of the International Labour Organization (ILO). BASF strives to uphold these standards worldwide. We mainly approach our adherence to international labor and social standards using three elements: the Compliance Program (including external compliance hotlines), close dialog with our stakeholders (such as with employee representatives or international organizations), and the global management process for the respect of international labor norms.

In 2016, we continued the restructuring of our management process begun in 2015. In the previous year, a global team of experts had already drafted a Group-wide BASF guideline on complying with international labor and social standards¹. This provided the basis for developing a process that determines potential gaps in complying with these standards. The management process will now be implemented successively around the world. A monitoring system launched in 2016 keeps track of the situation in countries in which BASF is active, and regularly reviews the implementation of set goals and measures. We performed a risk-based analysis of 43 countries by the end of 2016. The remaining countries are scheduled to be reviewed in 2017.