Basic ideas

Basic ideas for occupational health and safety

The Group considers occupational health and safety to be top priority and one of the important management foundations, and strives to provide a safe working environment.

Policy

As its global safety policy, the Group has adopted “Safety is a critical core value shared by the entire Tokai Carbon Group. We aim to provide a safe working environment for all people working in our plants by eliminating hazards and reducing risks.”

Structures

Health and safety management structure

The Group's safety policy and initiatives are subject to approval by the Executives Meeting and the Board of Directors. At the Company, the Board of Directors supervises occupational health and safety risks, and the director in charge of risk reports to the Board of Directors on important matters such as occupational accidents as necessary.
In addition, we hold Central Work Committee meetings attended by the director in charge of health and safety, department managers in charge, and the labor union to discuss health and safety issues and to work on continuous improvement of health and safety. Further, we hold Health and Safety Committee meetings at each site with the participation of managers and supervisors at each site and the labor union to report and discuss matters related to occupational health and safety. Cooperating companies to which the Company outsources its work also participate in the Health and Safety Committee meetings as observers.

Harassment consultation desk and Internal reporting system

The Company has an internal system for reporting improprieties that accepts reports and consultations from employees, including harassment and bullying. This system has both internal (Legal Affairs Department and Audit & Supervisory Board Members) and external (an advising attorney) contact points. It allows employees to make reports and receive　consultation by various means including telephone, fax, email, and postal mail. The Company’s Guidelines on Handing Internal Reports clearly states that, apart from cases when the system is deliberately misused, informants will not be dismissed or subjected to unfair treatment under this system.
→Compliance　Internal reporting system

Objectives

Objectives for health and safety

The Group is working on injury prevention activities with the aim of eliminating the occurrence of serious injuries. In 2024, the Group's safety target is a frequency rate of 1.20 or less.
For 2024, Tokai Carbon is working on three targets in its priority plan: enhancing risk extraction activities (safety patrol, close call incidents, and pre-work hazard prediction), securing safety of high-risk operations, and improving workplace working environment. In preparing the priority plan, priority has been given to recent trends in occupational accidents.

Initiatives

Improving occupational health and safety

In order to eliminate hazards and reduce risks, the Group promotes the implementation of risk assessments and countermeasures. In the risk assessment, we evaluate the risks that lead to injury and the risks that affect health, clarify the priorities for the identified risks, and improve the work environment. When installing new production equipment or refurbishing existing equipment, we conduct risk assessments from the equipment design stage, and work to reduce risks in advance if the risks are high. For work-related injuries (occupational accidents), poor physical condition, and serious incidents, we first grasp the situation through on-site verification, thoroughly investigate the root cause through the five whys analysis, and formulate measures to prevent recurrence to confirm its effectiveness. Moreover, in order to prevent similar accidents, we share information on the details and countermeasures with all business sites.
In addition to these initiatives, we conduct safety education to enhance our safety awareness. In 2023, 118 employees, including newly hired employees, participated in training provided by an external organization in order to improve their sensitivity to danger. We also held a training session using virtual reality (VR) for people to experience danger, with 67 participants in 2023.
Furthermore, we are conducting safety training with the aim of thoroughly enforcing safety rules within our workplaces and measures to prevent the recurrence of past occupational accidents, and in 2023, the training program was provided to 106 employees who have been with the Company for less than five years at all of our business sites.

Emergency response training

Tokai Carbon has formulated its Emergency Response Manual to prepare for emergencies occurring at plants, as well as conducting disaster prevention drills at regular intervals. Assumptions are made for major earthquakes, tsunami, fires and other emergencies intrinsic to plants and drills are conducted for firefighting, lifesaving, evacuation, oil spill response measures, and others.
The drills include swift reporting to government offices and to various related regional parties, and also includes information-sharing in line with the internal reporting structure to allow swift and appropriate response in time of emergency.

Water spraying drill from a pumper truck (Shiga Plant)

Firefighting and spraying drill (Chita Plant)

Oil spill prevention measures by deploying oil fences(Ishinomaki Plant)

Group company joint evacuation drill

Labor relations

The Tokai Carbon Group respects the rights of employees, including the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. Tokai Carbon has signed a union shop agreement with the Tokai Carbon Labor Union. Union membership includes 79.2% of Tokai Carbon employees (as of the end of December 2023.)
Labor and management discuss matters concerning labor relations and business activities in meetings of the Labor Committee, Work Committee, and Expert Committee on Human Resources Systems. Working from a foundation of trust and cooperation labor and management fulfill their respective responsibilities and strive to implement policies that promote positive interaction.
When it seeks to implement organizational and employment policy changes, management consults with the union before finalizing decisions.

Working hours and wages

With regard to working hours, we comply with all labor-related laws. We also aim to restrict overtime and reduce it in consideration of the work-life balance of our employees and the maintenance and improvement of their health. We comply with all labor related laws as they pertain to wages, too. After considering factors such as a living wage, we set a basic policy of paying employees the minimum wage or higher.

Performance

Occupational health and safety data

Occupational accidents

In 2023, the Group's frequency rate was 0.80 (fatal accidents: 0; lost time injuries: 7).
All lost time accidents were physical injuries, and thorough recurrence prevention measures have been implemented from both hard (facilities, equipment, and tools) and soft (human resources, technology, awareness, and information) aspects in accordance with the cause of the accident. The Tokai Carbon Group has not suffered any fatal accidents between 2020 and 2023 regarding its employees and workers under contract.
Tokai Carbon's frequency rate for the past four years has remained lower than the average value for the domestic manufacturing industry (100 or more employees).

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• *Frequency rate:Injuries or deaths per million working hours.
• *Average data for the manufacturing industry is available from Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's 2022 Industrial Accident Trend Survey.