Safe Production has long been Cliffs’ number one Core Value. With the goal of reducing safety-related incidents by integrating additional structure and accountability into our safety practices and training, Cliffs introduced a new Safety Strategy for our North American Business Unit during 2009.

Thus far, the Strategy, which emphasizes behavior-based safety and improving first line supervisor effectiveness at managing safety, has been successful. Our North American operations experienced a 25 percent reduction in the Total Reportable Incident Rate in 2009.

Implementing our Safety Strategy

The Strategy will be implemented at all of our North American operations over a five-year period. In 2009, each of our North American operations selected a minimum of four new safety standards to implement.

Each site measures the status and progress of Safety Strategy implementation using a Balanced Scorecard approach. The Scorecards standardize measurement for all North American locations while providing latitude for each location to focus on what is most relevant for a particular site.

Scorecards measure proactive initiatives such as:

• Safety interactions/observations
• Root cause analysis
• After-action reviews
• Quality assessment of proactive initiatives
• Adoption of the standards
• Audit action plans
• Data trending and analysis

Approximately 95 percent of Cliffs’ North American employees are represented by health and safety committees. Only office facilities located outside of mining or processing operations are not covered. Scorecard elements have been integrated into site managers’ annual objectives and performance assessments. Similarly, our labor union agreements include provisions that support our safety culture.

You can read more about our health and safety culture in the Employee Well-Being section of  our 2009 Sustainability Report, Committed to the Global Community.