By Melanie Burton
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – BHP and Rio Tinto have used confidentiality agreements to prevent female employees from speaking about sexual harassment at work, according to a lawyer leading Australian class action lawsuits against the miners.
Brisbane-based law firm JGA Saddler filed a class action against each mining giant this week, alleging widespread and systemic sexual harassment and discrimination at Australian mine sites.
The class actions promise more headaches for the two firms, which have struggled to rebuild their public image. A 2022 Western Australia state government review of remote mining sites found women frequently dealt with sexual harassment and sexual assault. The industry has also been held to account for the destruction of Aboriginal heritage, mine fatalities and environmental disasters in recent years.
JGA Saddler has spoken to hundreds of women and seen evidence of the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements by the mining industry, lead litigator Josh Aylward told Reuters in an interview, adding some have expressed concern that the NDAs could prevent them from joining the class actions.
BHP and Rio said they do not currently use NDAs when dealing with sexual harassment allegations.
Mining companies have pressured vulnerable workers to sign agreements because they feared losing their jobs or being blacklisted from the industry, Aylward alleged.
“It’s common practice,” he said. “There’s a lot of other industries that have matured past the use of NDAs and realised that you have to front up for earlier sins, and if people want to talk about what happened to them, then they should be able to do it.”
Rio said in a statement to Reuters it would not enforce any historic confidentiality terms that prevented employees from discussing their personal experiences.
A representative for BHP referred Reuters to the company’s annual report, where it said it had stopped using NDAs relating to sexual harassment claims in March 2019 and doesn’t enforce past agreements.
Both companies also say they take all allegations of sexual harassment seriously and are seeking to stamp it out in the industry.
Angela Green, who worked in BHP’s explosives team from 2018-2024, said in a statement she plans to join the class action. She said she was unfairly terminated for falsifying a log book, which she denies, after she had made a complaint about sexual harassment.
Green alleges she was subsequently offered compensation from BHP for the manner of her dismissal on condition she signed an agreement with a confidentiality clause.