Chrysler Group and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have been recognized by the National Safety Council (NSC), as a leading independent authority, with nearly 60 awards for efforts to improve employee safety and health in Chrysler Group facilities. In presenting the awards at the 2003 UAW-DaimlerChrysler Health and Safety Meeting on March 8, NSC Vice President Bobby Jackson said, "DaimlerChrysler has made safety a core value. The achievements I'm about to present come from hard work and high safety standards." Jackson presented the NSC's Significant Improvement Award to 32 individual Chrysler Group plants and depot facilities, as well as Green Cross Awards to 22 individual sites. The Significant Improvement Award is granted to work sites that exhibit a 20 percent reduction in injuries that result in lost work time. Green Cross for Excellence Awards go to work sites with a reduction of lost work days due to injuries that is 50 percent or better than the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics average for that industrial group. In addition, four locations received the Perfect Award, presented to facilities that had no injuries in 2002 resulting in lost work time. In March, the Chrysler Group said it received eight Significant Improvement Awards and five Green Cross Awards for overall and divisional safety performance. Jim Thomas, director of Health, Safety and Medical Operations for the Chrysler Group, said the Chrysler Group and the UAW approach health and safety as a joint company-union effort, exemplified by a joint program titled "Bringing Excellence to Safety Teams" (BEST). "Our leadership teams have put a lot of effort into standardizing our safety processes," he said. "That, in turn, has driven our incident rates and rate of lost work days down by well over 50 percent in three years. It's an incredible achievement, and one that really shows the power of teamwork."