A woman has spoken out about the dark side of lucrative mining jobs, sharing harrowing tales about her experience in the industry.
She said was asked to pick up used condoms from the floor and flush toilets for other miners while being sexually harassed.
Julia, a former West Australian fly-in, fly-out worker (FIFO), has criticised the mining industry for poorly treating utilities and female workers.
After working as a ‘utility’ in the mines of West Australia for three years Julia said the working conditions were not easy to put up with, especially for women.
A fly-in, fly-out worker, Julia, has revealed the dark side of Australian mining industry (stock image)
Julia, 30, says she was sexually harassed at her work place and had to pick up used condoms and flush other people’s toilets (stock image)
Utilities – workers titled as ‘all rounders’ – are not allowed to go into the mines but are given household or groundwork duties, Julia told News.com.au.
‘It’s enough to make you want to run into the desert and never look back,’ she said.
Julia took her first FIFO job in 2012 when the mining industry in Australia was blossoming.
The then 26-year-old was expecting to start in a housekeeping role but to her surprise was assigned to kitchen.
She could not make out why had she been assigned to kitchen instead of cleaning the dongas, tiny tin-sheds in which miners live, until her first encounter with sexual harassment in the workplace.
‘I was having a drink in the bar with a girlfriend two months after we’d started FIFO work and the site manager walked up to me and said “The only reason I put you in the kitchen was so I could walk past you and stare at your ass every day”, that was the boss of the whole site that said that to me,’ she said.
The sexual comments did not just stop there as another male worker approached her and authoritatively said she was going to visit his donga and ‘f*** his d***.’
Julia said she faced ‘heinous’ working conditions and so did her female co-workers (stock image)
She worked in 45 degrees wearing long pants, a long shirt and steel-capped boots (stock image)
Julia realised she wasn’t the only woman being treated unfairly when she saw a female shopkeeper being harassed by a passerby.
She, along with other women, raised the issue with their superintendent, a female, but she said her ‘limited role’ could not provide much help either.
Moving away from sexual harassment, Julia describes how a job which is considered an ‘averagely well paying job’ had no strict constraints on how many hours a worker would do.
At times, when she realised she was working for 12-14 hours in a day at a salary of $64,000 for a year, it reduced her to $22 per hour for a ‘heinous’ job.
Adding to the exhaustiveness was the terrible sites she had to put up with everyday while cleaning the dongas.
‘Often we’d walk in and there’d be used condoms on the floor, wank tissues, they wouldn’t flush the toilet,’ she said.
Julia’s everyday life gave her anxiety and impacted her mental health as she was required to meet strict quotas of finishing 45 dongas in 12 hours, which comes down to 1 in 16 minutes (stock image)
Julia’s everyday life gave her anxiety and impacted her mental health as she was required to meet strict quotas of finishing 45 dongas in 12 hours, which comes down to 1 in 16 minutes.
She worked in 45 degrees wearing long pants, a long shirt and steel-capped boots at a stretch and without breaks.
When it comes to jobs providing highest average salaries, the mining sector sits atop.
Today, average salary for a worker in the mining industry is $116,000 per year which is almost 14 per cent less than the figure in 2013.
Julia, who is now 30 years old, said people don’t realise the cost at which that money comes.
She said she is well aware of the fact that people out of the mining industry understand and sympathise with the life of a FIFO worker but she wants to draw attention to what women go through.