Astacia Stevens wanted to drive a haul truck – the giant yellow vehicles that bring ore from the mines – for Rio Tinto, the equally vast company that controls swathes of the iron-rich Pilbara.
But, she told a West Australian parliamentary inquiry, her attempts to move from working for a contractor for Rio to working directly for it and wearing the company logo on her shirt were met with a demand from a superior she have sex with him.
The supervisor, who the inquiry gave the code name “A”, “took me off the trucks and took me up to the site lookout in his supervisor vehicle”, Stevens, who now works in an administrative position at Rio, said in a written submission to the parliament.
“The lookout is secluded and requires a site pass to access, which A held. At the lookout, whilst in the vehicle, he unzipped his pants and leaned back in his seat.
“He was not wearing any underwear and said to me ‘if you want your shirt, you have to get on your knees first’.”
She refused, did not get transferred to Rio, and was victimised and fired, she told the inquiry, which is investigating the sexual harassment of women on fly-in-fly-out mine sites.
In a report Rio released this week, the company revealed that women who work for it reported 21 incidents of rape, attempted rape or sexual assaults over the past five years.
The report, the result of an investigation by the former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, showed that sexual harassment, bullying and racism is endemic across Rio’s global workforce.
It was the latest blow for a company already reeling from its decision in May 2020 to blow up ancient rock shelters at Juukan Gorge, in the Pilbara, in order to mine more iron, the Serbian government’s decision last month to cancel its licence to mine lithium after a community outcry that saw thousands march in the streets, and ongoing controversy over its Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia, the cost of which has blown out by billions of dollars after Rio struck a new deal with the government a week ago that it hopes will end a long-running dispute over the country’s share of potential profits from the vast copper deposit.
However, the inquiry in WA has shown that Rio is not alone when it comes to failing to provide a workplace free from rape, bullying and harassment.
At BHP, in the two years between July 2019 and July 2021, there were 18 cases of rape, attempted rape or what the company called “non-consensual touching of a sexual nature”, the company said in a submission to the inquiry.
This included five incidents of rape.
Investors, the sex discrimination commissioner and the mining companies themselves say action is needed to curb a culture of sexual assault, sexism, bullying and racism in the industry, especially at mines where workers fly in and out and are often among strangers, far from their homes, friends and family.
Debby Blakey, the chief executive of $68bn super fund Hesta, which has been critical of Rio’s management over Juukan Gorge, said Rio had done the right thing by conducting such a comprehensive review and said other mining companies needed to consider whether it was something they should also do.
“The findings of the Rio workplace culture report that sexual harassment, racism and bullying were systemic are extremely concerning for investors and potentially point to broader issues across the mining sector,” she said.
The sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, said: “A broad shift in the culture of the mining industry is urgently needed.”
She said the industry was identified as “an industry that required urgent collective action” in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2020 Respect@Work report.
“I commend Rio Tinto for taking this important step of gathering evidence, acknowledging its role in the harms of sexual harassment and sexual assault in its workplaces and committing to change,” she said.
Rio has pledged to implement 26 recommendations made by Broderick to improve the organisation’s culture and make the workplace safer for the groups she found bore the brunt of bullying and discrimination – women, non-white people and LGBTIQ employees.
“The report is absolutely confronting, the stories sickening,” Rio’s head of iron ore, Simon Trott, told ABC Radio this week.
“We aspire to be a business where everyone is safe, respectful and included, and clearly the report highlights that bullying, sexual harassment, racism, other forms of disrespect, are … right across Rio’s operations around the world.”
BHP and the other big player in the Pilbara, Fortescue – where Astacia Stevens told the WA inquiry she also experienced sexual harassment while driving a haul truck for a contractor – have also said they are moving to eliminate toxic behaviour from their sites.
“We know incidents of poor behaviour do occur in our business, as they do in the industry and the community more broadly,” a BHP spokesperson said.
“We do not tolerate any form of racism, discrimination, harassment or bullying, and we are absolutely committed to eliminating it from our workplaces. We are making progress but we know we have more to do.”
Fortescue’s chief executive, Elizabeth Gaines, who is soon to leave her position as one of the few women who run a big miner, said: “There is no place for harassment of any kind at Fortescue or in any workplace, and we continue to take decisive action to ensure our workplaces are safe for everyone.”
The sentiments are noble but it is clear the industry has a long way to go.
Fearful to speak out
Broderick found problems across the global Rio workforce, but the mining camps where workers fly or drive in and stay on site were among the worst workplaces, with 56% of women she surveyed who worked at them saying they were bullied and 43% reporting sexual harassment.
Women Broderick’s team interviewed who don’t work directly for Rio but are employed by one of the company’s many contractors also said they faced extra abuse.
“The shut crew are groping you as you are taking your trolley around the camp,” one cleaner who worked for a Rio contractor told Broderick’s team.
“Every day there is sexual harassment to women bar staff,” another said.
A separate survey of FIFO workers in WA, conducted by union group the Western Mine Workers Alliance and submitted to the parliamentary inquiry, found 22% of women had been offered career advancement or other work benefits in return for sex and 22.9% had been sexually assaulted at work.
“I will not go into the crib room at all,” one female Rio employee who responded to the union survey said.
“I bring all my own food. I have experienced and witnessed so much leering and sexual comments. I have seen a man watch porn on bus and plane. I have found porn magazine in a truck. I have had underwear stolen. I have had a male try get into my room.”
She said a woman on her crew “was bashed by a male colleague”. Bystanders did not report it, she said. “People were saying she got what she deserved.”
All the big miners have systems in place that are supposed to allow employees to make complaints about violence, sexual harassment and bullying and have them resolved in a confidential way.
But Broderick’s report and evidence to the parliamentary hearing shows many staff are fearful to speak out and have little faith in company systems.
Kerin Collins, who told the inquiry she was bullied while working as an equipment maintenance trainer at BHP, said the company’s complaints system, Ethics Point, was better described as “Ethics Point (Less)” and a “spill kit for complaints” designed to “control, contain, clean up”.
“It’s not a place with independent, ethical investigators looking at your complaint and making sure BHP are adhering to their own charter values, it’s just a website being hosted by a third party where you enter data and without any third party interference, the unseen ‘ones and zeros’ go straight into the hands of BHP,” she said in a submission to the inquiry.
“Often complaints get handed back to the same leadership team in the same department and they investigate their own leadership personnel.”
BHP said that since 2019 allegations of sexual harassment have been investigated by a specialist central team, which is separate from other business units.
“This change was introduced in recognition of the need to enhance our investigation processes in order to improve reporting and increase the confidence of, and support for, impacted persons in our investigations,” it said in its submission to the WA inquiry.
Broderick found that at Rio, harmful behaviour was tolerated or normalised and “harmful behaviour by serial perpetrators is often an open secret”.
“Employees believe that there is little accountability, particularly for senior leaders and so called ‘high performers’ who are perceived to avoid significant consequences for harmful behaviour.”
Mick Buchan, the WA secretary of the CFMEU, blamed many of the cultural problems at FIFO sites across the industry on the practice of “motelling” or “hot-bedding”, where employees do not have the same room for the duration of their work on site but are moved around so that the company uses space as efficiently as possible.
“A huge step would be to go back to that community feel where once you land on a job, you stay in that room for the duration of that job so you can build up your own community,” he told the WA inquiry.
He also attacked the increased use of labour hire and contractors, saying mining companies were using them to relieve themselves of their responsibilities.
“You have got to the point now where some of them start up their own labour hire companies and some elements, so you may get to wear the shirt, but you do not get all the benefits,” he said.
“You can be let go in a text message with a day’s notice on either side, so it puts all that extra pressure on you if you have got an issue, whether it be a safety issue or anything, to just keep your mouth shut and just do what you are there to do.”
Ending culture of secrecy
The weight of evidence has forced mining companies to take action that so far includes reducing the amount of alcohol available at FIFO camps, increasing security measures, beefing up complaints investigation and giving managers more training.
But companies also need to abandon a culture of secrecy, Jenkins said.
Already, both Rio and BHP have ruled out using non-disclosure agreements to gag victims of assault or harassment from speaking out after negotiating a settlement with the company.
“Rio Tinto commissioning and publishing the results of its review is a significant shift from the common approach of denial, secrecy, and lack of proactive action that we identified for many Australian workplaces as a barrier to safety and respect,” Jenkins said.
“I have consistently said that the focus of employers should be to stop sexual harassment, rather than to stop complaints and media reporting of sexual harassment. This is the mindset shift required from all employers.”
