Employee relations and labour rights

Strengthening labour rights due diligence processes

Ambition

Employee relations and labour rights are an essential part of Maersk’s Social ambition. We offer decent, fair and equitable working conditions for all our people. We identify risks for employees and third-party labour, and implement mitigating and preventive actions to ensure that our growth adequately considers our full social responsibilities.

2023

100% of employees within Maersk trained in employee relations and labour rights

A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) is committed to respecting fundamental labour rights and constructive employee relations. We align with core ILO conventions and internationally accepted UN and OECD frameworks and comply with relevant local legislation. Our organisation respects the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, supports trade union and work council engagement, the rights to not be subjected to forced labour, child labour or discrimination in respect of employment and occupation and standards on working hours and the safety and health of workers.

We uphold our employee relations and labour rights commitments through our Commit Rule on employee relations, a dedicated guideline on automation, collective bargaining negotiations, and company-wide employee training. Our Global Employee Relations Council shapes our approach by discussing issues on global scale, gathering evidence and making proposals for global solutions.

Growing responsibly

Maersk’s growth ambitions mean that we are adding thousands of new colleagues every year, also through acquisitions. As our portfolio of warehousing and other land-based logistics services continues to grow, we are committed to ensuring that we manage all new areas of business with full respect for labour rights. In 2022, we created a playbook for our new warehousing businesses that outlines onboarding best practices and explains the fundamental employee relations and labour rights concepts of our company.

As a high-level strategic target for this category, we provide faceto-face training for managers in key areas such as managing employee relations in daily operations and negotiations and conflict management.

Employee relations is part of our standard onboarding programme and we have annual refresher training for all employees. We also track overall training progress of our employee relations and labour rights training, and in 2022, the completion rate was 83%, which is on track to meet our target of having a 100% completion rate by 2023.

We continue to strengthen our labour rights due diligence process, gathering actionable insights on critical issues in our business. Every two years, we conduct a company-wide labour rights self-assessment to review areas of risk as well as internal policies and procedures. In the latest assessment, completed in 2021, working hours, workplace discrimination and harassment, and compensation were identified as significant labour rights risks. We are addressing the challenges by direct engagement with local management, with training and tools for managers, strengthened workplace harassment incident processes, and with mechanisms such as the Maersk whistleblower system and Ombuds function for employees to feel safe when speaking up about harassment.

Progress on key labour rights risk areas

Following a review across APM Terminals in 2022, we worked closely with local businesses and third-party suppliers to improve working conditions for contracted labour in our terminals. We acted to resolve issues found in the review, specifically working hours, overtime, health and safety, and workers’ accommodation. In 2022, we developed updated Maersk Global Standards on Third-Party Labour to offer clear guidance and manage our expectations on suppliers of Third-Party Labour. We will begin rolling out the Maersk Global Standards on ThirdParty Labour in 2023.

Automated processes are rapidly changing the way we are working across our business. Since 2018, we have had principles in place outlining how to communicate to employees about changes to working practices, and with a specific focus on retraining in new areas of work. In 2022, we developed a playbook to further support our terminals in ensuring these transformations happen in a responsible way.

In 2022, we developed our Fair Pay Program to ensure employees are rewarded fairly in line with their contributions to Maersk. We target equal pay for equal work, ensuring that any differences are due to objective factors such as experience, skills, knowledge and performance, and not due to gender or any other characteristics such as ethnicity, race, nationality, age, disability, religion, beliefs or sexual orientation. Fair Pay develops continuously, and we have and will over time expand the considerations we apply.

Why it matters

Many aspects of our business touch on human rights, including our employees' working conditions, health and safety, how our vessels are recycled, how we use digital data and technologies, and our suppliers' business practices. Our conduct within our own business and through our business relationships can therefore have a significant impact on society, both positive and negative. Further, increasing regulation and growing expectations from our stakeholders confirm that human rights is a material topic for Maersk.