A former truck driver at a mining contractor has told an inquiry she was fired after refusing to have sex with a superior and also detailed an alleged horror Rio Tinto incident.
Contracting giant Macmahon has had a surge in complaints about sexual harassment in its mining sector workforce this year after shocking allegations emerged in the press.
Chief executive Michael Finnegan told a West Australian parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday that the reports were “incredibly confronting” and the underreporting of the widespread problem because victims didn’t feel comfortable complaining was “disturbing”.
Macmahon is at the centre of one particularly alarming submission by mother of two Astacia Stevens, who was working for the company as a haul truck driver on a Fortescue site when she was propositioned by a superintendent heading an investigation into her vehicle almost hitting another.
He allegedly told the married woman that if she had sex with him, he would make the investigation go away.
She refused and he “fired me the very next day”, she said in her submission to the inquiry.
“I was only employed by Macmahon for three months,” Ms Stevens wrote.
“I was glad to be fired from Macmahon … If I wasn’t fired, I don’t think things would have ended safely for me.
“I felt as though all the men were sexual predators.”
She also recounted a horrific account of working for a different contractor at a Rio Tinto site, where a superintendent told her that if she wanted to get “her shirt” – meaning she would gain a permanent job with the mining giant – she would “have to get on your knees first”.
Mr Finnegan said the Macmahon team found the allegations so confronting “we had people ringing up asking about it”.
“So we put out a communication just reinforcing the way we want to deal with this and how important to us that it’s not just lip service,” he said.
“We were lucky enough that one or two individuals did respond directly with some incidents of sexual harassment and in some cases they were bystanders, which is really pleasing.
“If we can have bystanders reporting this, it’s going to be so much more powerful.”
Macmahon general manager for people Nicola Hamilton told the inquiry that the company had received 18 sexual harassment complaints over the past five years, with just two of those in 2020 surging to 11 this year when the explosive headlines emerged, suggesting exposing the problem had encouraged reporting.
Of the 11 reports, five resulted in termination, with two reported to police.
The inquiry was told that sexual harassment only became a safety issue discussed at Macmahon board meetings last month.
Macmahon has long had policies about it but is implementing a “stand-alone” policy, the inquiry was told.
Mr Finnegan was asked if those policies had failed to protect women in the company’s workforce, given “the outcome doesn’t match the intention”.
“Oh look, absolutely – when there’s one case of sexual harassment, it means that it hasn’t worked,” he replied.
“That caused us to take that as a priority and revisit it, and we’re committed to doing that.”
Rio Tinto informed the inquiry in August that since January 1 last year, it had substantiated one case of sexual assault and 29 cases of sexual harassment within its FIFO operations and was investigating one allegation of sexual assault and 14 reports of sexual harassment.
BHP submitted to the inquiry it had fired 48 workers for sexual assault and sexual harassment at its WA mining operations since 2019.
Originally published as Macmahon chief admits policies ‘absolutely’ failed to protect female staff amid ‘incredibly confronting’ sex predator claims
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