Business leaders have pledged to improve health and safety standards in the workplace.
The leaders made the pledge at the launch in Auckland of the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum, which was set up to get chief executives and managing directors directly involved in workplace safety.
The forum's spokesperson, NZ Bus chief executive Bruce Emson, says it's intolerable that workplace accidents each year kill up to 100 people and seriously injured about 6000.
Business leaders have the power to reduce those numbers, he says by collectively putting their thoughts together and changing how health and safety are viewed and delivered in New Zealand.
Mr Emson says employees have the right to go home every evening in the same state as they came to work in the morning.
The forum, attended by nearly 100 business leaders, was launched by Prime Minister John Key on Thursday.
The Government has just announced that it wants ACC rates to be levied according to a workplace's history of accidents.
