Bullying, sexual harassment and racism rife at Rio Tinto, workplace review finds
Bullying, sexual harassment and racism are common throughout Rio Tinto, according to a review of the global miner’s workplace culture conducted by Australia’s former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
Rio Tinto’s chief executive, Jakob Stausholm, said the findings were “deeply disturbing” and he promised the company would implement all 26 recommendations Broderick made to improve its culture.
“I offer my heartfelt apology to every team member, past or present, who has suffered as a result of these behaviours,” he said on Tuesday. “This is not the kind of company we want to be.”
Broderick and her team received survey responses from 10,000 of Rio’s 45,000 employees and conducted 109 “group listening sessions” around the world. There were also 85 confidential one-on-one meetings.
Broderick said the majority of women who responded experienced “everyday sexism” such as being left out of meetings, not being provided with a women’s toilet or “even being asked to take notes, get coffee, or even do a colleague’s washing” while 21 women reported an actual or attempted rape or sexual assault in the past five years.
“Bullying is systemic, experienced by almost half of the survey respondents,” she said in the report released by Rio on Tuesday.
“Sexual harassment and everyday sexism occur at unacceptable rates. Racism is common across a number of areas.”
Broderick said everyday sexism was damaging in its own right but also “creates fertile ground for more serious misconduct, such as sexual harassment and sexual assault”.
Sexual harassment “was a significant organisational challenge”, she said, experienced by 43% of women working at fly-in fly-out (Fifo) and drive-in drive-out mine sites and 28% of women across the entire
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