Automotive and aerospace industries sign agreement for labor safety

QUERETARO – The automotive and aerospace industries joined the Safe and Healthy Workplace Environments Program (ELSSA) coordinated by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), a preventive health strategy for the timely detection of chronic degenerative diseases in the workforce.

In this context, at the Bombardier plant in Colón, industry representatives signed the National Agreement for the Health, Safety and Welfare of Workers.

During the signing of the agreement, the General Director of IMSS, Zoé Robledo, emphasized that this program also involves the transformation of a work space, to implement healthy dining rooms, breastfeeding rooms and propagate a sports culture that in turn has a positive effect on staff turnover.

He also contextualized that globally, every 15 seconds 153 workers in the automotive industry have an accident, including those that occur in production and assembly lines; and the accident rate in vehicle factories is higher than in other sectors.

Speaking about the automotive and aerospace industries, the IMSS director referred that before the pandemic these branches employed 1,28,000 people, in the first four months of the contingency they lost 68,000 jobs, a decrease of 6.6%; he emphasized that this decrease was not as significant as in other activities.

The IMSS Director of Economic and Social Benefits, Mauricio Hernandez Avila, recalled that this initiative was launched in May of this year as a strategy to improve the security of business organizations.

"The strategy seeks to work together, government, workers' organizations and companies, integrating efforts to establish a new culture of prevention and health promotion in the workplace, helping to strengthen the competitiveness of this important industry," he said.