Employee relations and labour rights

We respect and uphold fundamental labour rights and determinedly pursue constructive employee relations in every area of our business.

Why employee relations and labour rights matter

The way we treat our employees, and their representatives, is fundamental to our success – and never more so as our landside operations expand. We are committed to respecting labour rights and ensuring constructive employee relations in all our workplaces.

These commitments are based on core ILO conventions and internationally accepted frameworks from the UN and OECD, as well as compliance with applicable local legislation where we operate.

Our ambition

We offer decent, fair and equal working conditions and strive to make Maersk a good place to work for all employees. We identify risks for third-party labour and implement mitigating and preventive actions. We also involve employees in our efforts to ensure that we adequately consider our responsibilities towards our people as our business grows.

Employee relation and labor rights

Our targets

100%
Of employees within Maersk trained in employee relations and labour rights by 2023

Highlights in 2022

83%
Employees trained in labour rights
More than four out of five Maersk employees had received training in employee labour rights by the end of 2022

Priorities and actions

Our priority is to ensure constructive employee relations with full support for the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. We actively engage with trade unions, workers councils and other employee representative bodies, and take a proactive approach to managing new challenges responsibly as the scope of our business grows.

Decision Making

Managing our commitments

We manage our employee and labour rights commitments using a central governance system,  and policies covering specific business areas of our business.
Scanning

Driving progress

An established Employee Relations Council sets direction and monitors progress. All our employees receive training on employee relations and labour rights.
Inspection

Third-party labour rights

We proactively invest in solutions to emerging issues, such as third-party labour working conditions.
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Rights on land

Our Global Integrator-strategy has a built-in expansion for our labour rights-related activities on land.

Featured highlights and case stories

Growing and modernising responsibly

Maersk’s growth ambitions mean that we are adding thousands of new colleagues every year, both organically and through acquisitions. We are committed to ensuring that we manage all new areas of the 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 Maersk.

We continue to build an approach for engaging employee representatives in these processes and actions in a timely manner, to ensure that we prioritise employee relations and labour rights alongside the growth of the company.

Growing and modernising responsibly

Equal pay for equal work

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.

In 2022, we developed our Fair Pay Program to ensure employees are rewarded fairly in line with their contributions to Maersk. The Fair Pay Program is always developing, and we will continue to expand the considerations we apply.

Sustainability Report 2022

Explore our progress on environmental, social and governance dimensions in our latest Sustainability Report.
Maersk sustainability report

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