101-2.2, 101-2.5, 103-1, 103-2, 103-3
Peñoles maintains a culture of prevention focused on the safety of our people and on business continuity. Our safety philosophy is based on the design, maintenance and safe operation of our processes toward a zero-disabling accident rate.

403-1, 403-8
Our management system is grounded in a culture of prevention and responsibility toward our workers, which is set within our Sustainable Development Policy and our safety philosophy principles. This system comprises 12 safety and hygiene management best practices that include the 14 elements of the Safety Administration Process (SAP). It applies to all our business units and is aligned with our internal regulations as well as with international and national standards. It is audited internally and may also be audited by independent experts.

Our units establish preventive measures consistent with the Workplace Safety and Health Self-Management Program recommended by the Ministry of Labor and Social Planning. This earned our company recognition as a Safe Company by that Ministry.

In 2020, the El Roble mine at Velardeña earned Silver Helmet distinction in the category of “Underground mine with more than 500 workers.” This award recognizes the safety performance of companies that are members of the Mexican Mining Chamber.

*Due to the public health contingency, only two safety and health audits were conducted: at Minera Tizapa and Minera La Parreña.

Simba drilling equipment inside Sabinas unit

The Sabinas mine maintained its ISO 45001:2018 certification for the second year in a row, for its Workplace Health and Safety Management System, while Industrias Magnelec obtained this certification for the first time.

The Química del Rey and Fertirey plants continued their certification in the Comprehensive Responsibility Management System developed by the National Chemical Industry Association.

As part of its safety culture, Peñoles has a program of regular corporate safety and health audits, to analyze the degree to which safety and health risks are controlled at each business unit. This helps improve our operations. This year, however, the on-site audit program was suspended in order to reduce employees’ exposure to contagion.

Safety organization
403-4
Peñoles’ management structure is modeled on a high-performance team and committees. The leadership team is responsible for providing resources, facilitating and ensuring follow-up, and improving safety and management processes in the business units. This is based on the Sustainable Development Plan, Strategy 7.0, and on Environment, Safety and Health Guideline L.7.1, which includes safety.

All workers, at all levels of the organization, have specific roles and responsibilities for complying with the safety guidelines. Programs are designed for the various models of collaborative work, participation and inquiry, like committees, work teams, safety and hygiene commissions, emergency brigades, mixed training and skill-building commissions, company union relations, and others. These programs include activities relating to safety and risk management.

All business units have safety specialists responsible for training and advising workers, as well as emergency brigades trained in areas like mining rescue operations, firefighting, first aid, and handling of hazardous material emergencies and evacuation.

Furthermore, as mandated by law, every business unit has a Safety and Hygiene Commission made up of union and non-union members. Mining units have committees made up of contractor personnel, which conduct regular checks to identify hazardous conditions and unsafe actions, proposing measures to prevent labor risks and investigate accidents.

Strengthening safety culture
403-7
We promote a culture of prevention regarding our workers’ safety, according to our Sustainable Development Policy. The concrete actions are based on our Code of Conduct and on our organizational values of trust, responsibility, integrity and loyalty.

Organizational safety culture, which centers around 12 best practices, is embodied in the leadership and visible and proven commitment of our senior management, division business heads and the alignment of all the business units.

In 2020, we faced the challenge of keeping our axes of action in motion amid a public health emergency, with all the physical and administrative measures necessary to guarantee safe practice in all our workplaces, and using data resources to continue the processes of safety dissemination, training and preparation, as well as advice, support and performance tracking.

For the past ten years, we have worked on building a positive safety culture based on employer-union synergies. The main advances and results of this have been professionalization of the safety and hygiene commissions through certification of their members, the certification of work positions: fork lift drivers in our metallurgical plants and operators of specialized equipment like low-profile trucks and loaders and drill jumbos for mining work.

An interdivisional team was formed to follow up on agreements and commitments with the National Mining and Metals Workers’ Union (FRENTE) to bolster safety culture. This team focused on human skill-building, practice standardization, training, leadership workshops for local committees, new members and prospects, and strengthening security based on behavior. We also conducted inspection visits in which company, union and safety and hygiene committees worked together to check on safety conditions in our facilities, verifying synergies between each local executive committee and leaders of the workplaces.

As part of the preparations for the 10th annual Safety Symposium, the LEAL survey was redesigned. This instrument is used to measure workplace attitudes and conduct. Due to the pandemic, the survey was applied differently this year: personnel voted using their feet on carpets. The survey was conducted between August and October, and covered all union and non-union member personnel. The results were incorporated automatically into a database so they could be analyzed.

In the last quarter of the year, with the support of members of the FRENTE national executive committee, a tool called the Dynamic Tracking Table was developed, which will continue the work on agreements and commitments resulting from various lines of management-union action, one of them being the Safety Symposium.

Training
403-5, EM-MM-320a.1
Our business units reported the participation of 102,499 people (72,004 union and non-union employees and 30,495 contractors) in safety training, a total of 330,440 work-hours. Some of the issues covered were: orientation on environment, safety and health; review of on-the-job safety techniques through preventive observation (STOP); interpretation of the ISO 45001:2018 safety standard; non-routine work; safety conditions for work in confined spaces; protection against falls from low heights; soldering and cutting (NOM-033-STPS-2015); fire prevention and protection in the workplace (NOM-002-STPS-2010), maintenance and storage of materials-occupational safety and health conditions (NOM-006-STPS-2014), underground mines and open-cut mines-occupational safety and health conditions (NOM-023-STPS-2012); operating discipline; accident investigation-root cause analysis (RCA); operating and maintenance procedures; globally harmonized system (GHS) (NOM-018-STPS-215); task safety analysis; standard safety and health practices; process safety administration workshop; and courses on electrical safety, and defensive driving.

We also carried out safety campaigns at various workplaces on topics like safety culture, review of task-based safety analysis and work cycle review; STOP review; prevention of accidents involving rock fall; being careful about hands and feet; use and handling of fixed refuge chambers; order and cleanliness; transportation, store, use and handling of explosives; flora and fauna; work at heights and creativity; vehicle-related accidents and respect for priority rules of zero tolerance and spirit of service; shielding and protecting equipment; and respect. The issues of planning, load hoisting and sustainable development were also addressed, along with statistics on electrical accidents and measures to prevent them.

Our emergency brigades have workers certified as firefighters, prehospital medical attention technicians and paramedics by institutions like the University of Texas (Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service), the Mexican Red Cross, the National Council for Standards and Certification of Labor Competencies (Conocer), and the Emergency Brigades Training School in the city of Celaya, Guanajuato.

Members of the safety and hygiene commissions are trained in competency standard EC0391.01 “Verification of workplace safety and hygiene conditions.” In 2020, 79 union and non-union workers were trained and 12 were evaluated, 11 of which are now certified. Due to the sanitary measures, we had to stop the evaluation process, so as to reduce the workers’ danger of exposure.

Risk exposure
403-2
Workers receive training and participated in the process of identifying hazards and evaluating risks, both for routine and non-routine work. They have mechanisms for reporting any work-related hazard and the authority to stop any activity that may place their own life or those of their coworkers in danger.

As part of the ten elements of our safety philosophy, we guarantee the families of our employees that our operating processes are designed and operated to ensure the health and physical safety of every one of our employees.

In the case of any accident, a report is drawn up and investigation and analysis conducted; the information is entered into the Safety and Health System in order to follow up on recommendations and avoid a recurrence. This information is also used in trend analysis and statistics.

403-9
In the past ten years, the Accident Index (AI) has gone from 1.94 to 1.47, the Days Lost Index (DLI) went from 1.22 to 1.00, and the Accident Rate (AR) went from 1.90 to 1.13, a marked downward trend in all cases.

Nevertheless, Peñoles deeply regrets six fatal accidents in 2020: the first of them at the Capela project, where an employee was struck by an object on February 21; the second at Francisco I. Madero due to rockfall on February 24; the third at the refinery, where an employee was pinned by a traveling crane on May 7; the fourth and fifth at the Capela project due to the collapse of an embankment on May 27, and the sixth at the Lead Smelter, when an employee was struck by equipment on June 8.

403-9
Among the most prominent work-related hazards, which pose a risk of serious injury, are rockfall, fire, entrapment, electrocution, being struck/run over by a vehicle, fall from heights and being struck by objects, among others that were detected in a process of risk identification and assessment pursuant to NOM-023-STPS-2012 and the Comprehensive Safety Management System.

The following are the results of our safety indicators, which were calculated using corporate standards and based on the total number of personnel and assessments consistent with regulations—identification of hazards, risk evaluation and implementation of controls. Data were collected from accident and incident investigation reports. Potential risk analysis; safety and health software information records.