2019 Sustainability Report

Why Human Rights & Fair Labor Practices Matters

As a manufacturing company, Greif participates in a labor-intensive industry. Our commitment to upholding international human rights and fair labor practices is directly aligned with our commitments to the health and safety of our colleagues. We maintain these standards and expectations throughout our supply chain. We are committed to working with responsible supply partners to ensure our customers’ confidence in our responsible sourcing and labor practices.

Governance

Greif maintains human rights and fair labor practices in accordance with the UN Global Compact Principles and International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. We enforce various policies to manage our commitment to these Principles internally and in our supply chain. This includes our Anti-harassment, Child Labor, Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity, Fair Treatment of Others, Human Rights and Supplier Code of Conduct policies. Greif’s local HR teams leverage risk assessments, age and legal working status verifications, awareness training, localized gender equality procedures and whistleblower procedures to implement these policies in our operations. To enable our colleagues to anonymously report potential human rights violations, we publicly post our global Ethics Line in all facilities. Each complaint is instantly directed to a regional vice president so it can be addressed appropriately. We investigated and resolved 90 percent of complaints. The remaining complaints are under ongoing investigation.

45 percent of Greif’s colleagues engage in collective bargaining agreements (CBA). Each CBA is independently managed in each region with our Human Resources and Legal teams providing oversight. For further information on Greif’s approach to labor relations, please see Risk Management & Business Continuity.

In 2019, we reorganized our Human Rights and Labor Practice team to better support progress towards our goals. This team is led by EMEA’s Regional Human Resources Director with support from members of the global human resources community representing each region and business unit, including Caraustar. In 2019 we began integrating our new colleagues from the Caraustar acquisition into our Human Rights and Labor Practice policies and programs, with the aim of completion in 2020.

Gender diversity is a critical component of Greif’s commitment to fair labor practices. Greif’s Women Network was formed to promote gender diversity in the organization and support progress against our women in management goal. Formed under the executive sponsorship of our CEO, the 70-plus member organization was founded with the mission of creating a diverse and inclusive network working together to inspire, connect and develop women for the success of Greif and a vision to support and enhance the experience and contributions of women at Greif, and to elevate diverse perspectives across the organization through greater gender parity. In 2019, the network began embedding diversity actions into Greif’s succession planning efforts and working to impact affirmative action plans, placement goals and proactive recruitment outreach efforts. Through 2020, the network aims to expand membership to over 100 members, including 25 percent males, establish local satellite chapters globally and educate Greif on the value of the network.

In 2020 we will partner with a third-party to conduct a global human rights review intended to create a pragmatic, consistent program to identify human rights and labor risks in all our facilities, identify mitigating actions and implement best-practice actions and solutions in line with our commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, UN Global Compact, ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights framework. Once complete, the Human Rights Review process will be embedded into our operations and will provide an ongoing mechanism to ensure we are consistently auditing and improving our human rights and labor practices.

Goals & Progress

Our three Human Rights & Fair Labor Practice goals are:

• 100 percent of our operations will be subject to internal human rights reviews, measured on a rolling cycle, by the end of fiscal year 2025.
• 100 percent of colleagues will be trained in human rights policies and procedures by the end of fiscal year 2025.
• Using fiscal year 2017 baseline, increase the proportion of women in management positions by 25 percent by the end of fiscal year 2025.

In 2019, we continued to develop and implement action plans towards the achievement of our goals. We further defined our Human Rights Review roadmap in support of beginning to develop our internal review program in 2020. We developed content for human rights training and will finalize an implementation plan in 2020. With the support of Greif’s Leadership Council and Greif Women’s Network, we developed a gender diversity work stream in support of our women in management goal. The work stream will begin in 2020, focusing on key activities to promote Greif as an attractive employer for women, train our Human Resources team to interview female candidates, eliminate gender bias from our interview processes and establish new recruitment partners to gain access to more diverse candidate pools.

In 2019, we incorporated Caraustar in the scope of our human rights and labor practice commitments. In 2020, we will re-evaluate our goals to account for our new colleagues.