Across the sector, too many companies direct more resources toward protecting the product than the people who make it. Inadequate ventilation, insufficient training, a failure to invest in safer alternatives, these are not oversights. They are choices.

This is despite battery workers facing daily exposure to hazardous substances including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and their chemical compounds. Both short-term contact and prolonged exposure can cause serious harm: lung damage, skin burns, neurological conditions, cancer, and reproductive health problems.

These risks are worsened in factories where workers lack union representation. At a Samsung SDI battery plant in Hungary – where local management has for years worked to block the unionisation of the workforce –, for example, health and safety protections were systematically stripped away. When workers raised concerns, neither management nor the government acted in their interest.

The cover-up that followed highlighted a critical truth: without trade unions, workers have no reliable mechanism to hold employers accountable. Where unions have a genuine voice, workers are heard, and standards are enforced. Without it, safety becomes a promise on paper.

As a result, industriAll Europe and trade unions across the sector are taking a clear and confident position: workers have a say, and employers must listen.

We are not waiting to respond to failures, we are setting the standard that employers must meet. That means demanding occupational safety and health (OSH) frameworks and ensuring workers have the collective structures to enforce them at the shop-floor level.

Our second campaign leaflet sets out what employers must guarantee as a baseline but as the non-negotiable conditions of a dignified and safe working environment:

• Clean air through regular air quality monitoring and proper ventilation systems.
• Chemical safety training so that every worker can identify and handle hazardous substances safely.
• Mandatory protective equipment and the substitution of toxic materials wherever technically feasible.
• Automation that reduces exposure — without increasing workload pressure or job insecurity.

Download and print our flyers to coordinate actions with colleagues and distribute materials during our European Gate Action Week from 23 to 27 March.