SYDNEY — For the first time in over 25 years, workers at BHP’s iron ore operations at Port Hedland in the Pilbara, a remote region in Western Australia, went on strike July 16. BHP, one of the largest mining companies in the world, has five iron ore operations across the region.
Some 160 members of three unions — Electrical Trades Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union and Australian Workers’ Union — at BHP’s iron ore export hub at Port Hedland walked off the job for eight hours July 16, and for 48 hours on Aug. 8. Electrical workers, members of the Electrical Trades Union at BHP’s operations near Newman, East Pilbara, also went on strike Aug. 8-9.
The three unions representing the port workers are in the midst of a fight for a new union contract to cover their 450-strong workforce at Port Hedland, where BHP ships out all its iron ore.
In 1999 the company started pushing workers at their iron ore sites onto “individual workplace contracts,” moving to shut the unions out of its operations.
Today more than half of the operators at BHP in Port Hedland have joined the unions to fight together for equal pay for equal work and for working conditions to be clearly set out in the contract.
Negotiations with the company began last October. They “were stonewalled for month after month” before taking industrial action, Adam Woodage, electrical workers union secretary in Western Australia, told the media. Now, “workers have had enough, they’re stepping up, and they’re fighting back.”
Workers want a union contract that recognizes “the high volume, high risk work” and dangerous conditions at BHP operations in the Pilbara. In February 2023 a worker died after being struck by a train in the rail yard at Port Hedland. Twenty-three workers were killed between 2014 and 2024 in all mining operations in Western Australia. In 2023-24 there were some 600 serious injuries.
Already there have been more deaths this year in the entire mining industry than the average for the previous five years. The most recent death was Aug. 3 when Paul Phillips, a 59-year-old member of the Mining and Energy Union, was killed while operating a mobile processing unit at the United Wambo coal mine in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney.
The Northern district of the Mining and Energy Union said the union was working “to ensure a thorough investigation” and that “every worker has the right to return home safely at the end of every shift.”