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Mining company BHP has said it is facing legal action from women alleging sexual harassment and sex discrimination over a period of more than two decades, as the industry grapples with a reckoning over workplace culture.
BHP said in a stock exchange statement on Wednesday that it had been served with a “representative class action” filed in Australia’s federal court related to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.
The case had been filed on behalf of all women who worked in the company’s Australian workplaces between November 12 2003 and March 11 this year who were affected by the “alleged conduct”, it added.
Filing of the claim against BHP comes weeks after a report from rival Rio Tinto found the number of employees reporting attempted sexual assault or rape at its own operations had risen in the past two years, despite efforts to stamp out the behaviour.
Serious sexual misconduct has been recognised in the past few years as a significant problem for mining companies, many of whom send employees to remote areas and camps where men vastly outnumber women. However, efforts to tackle the problem have been met with only limited success.
BHP revealed in 2021 to a parliamentary inquiry in Western Australia, the centre of the country’s iron ore industry, that it had dismissed 48 employees for sexual harassment at its “fly-in, fly-out” mines in the state since 2019 and that the alleged misconduct included six confirmed sexual assaults.
In 2022, a report commissioned by Rio Tinto found that 21 women said they had been subject to actual or attempted rape or sexual assault over five years.
BHP’s stock exchange statement said the class action was at a “preliminary stage” and the amount of damages being sought was not yet specified. However, in a representative class action lawyers acting for the claimants typically seek to establish strong similarities between the circumstances facing a relatively small number of claimants and to show that further people in the same category deserve compensation.
In a press statement on Wednesday following announcement of the court action, BHP said that in 2018 it had identified sexual harassment as a workplace health and safety risk subject to the same focus and oversight as other workplace health and safety risks.
“Over many years, we have been focused on identifying, calling out and dealing with instances of disrespectful behaviour, including sexual harassment, racism and bullying,” it said.
BHP’s shares were down 8p — 0.4 per cent — in early trading in London, at £20.02.
