last year, 33-year-old Astacia Stevens, described her experiences as a contract cleaner while she was working at a Rio Tinto mine site.Referring to a manager at the time, Stevens, a married mother of two, wrote: “He would frequently grab my bum, putting his fat gut into the small of my back as if though he would try to ‘ride me’. He would laugh when he did it, and he did it often in front of others present. He would often grab my hips from behind and pretend to sexually penetrate.
Despite this, more than 48 per cent of Rio employees participating in the review conducted by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said they had encountered bullying.About 28 per cent of female respondents said they had experienced sexual harassment and 21 respondents said they had been the victim of an attempted rape or sexual assault within the past five years.
Ms Broderick pointed to high levels of bullying in the commercial division and high levels of sexual harassment in the strategy, sustainability and development division. This week, energy behemoth Chevron said it was finalising a contract with an independent third party to conduct a review of its culture, a move it flagged last November.
“These are sector-wide issues. Hopefully others will treat the findings as an indicator of what might be happening inside their own organisation and go and have a look,” Mr Parkinson said.whether they were also presiding over a culture of systemic bullying, racism and sexism.
Rio should be really brave and publish names of the perpetrators