Rio Tinto backgrounder 2

The RIO TINTO Campaign site

BACKGROUNDER No. 2

March 1998

RIO TINTO – WORKERS AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS

It was during the Spanish civil war that Rio Tinto first attracted widespread attention through its dealings with Franco's military regime took power in 1936. At the time the company was heavily criticised in the British press for working with the Spanish junta. However, as the chairman Sir Auckland Geddes noted, trouble at the company's mines ceased when the Spanish military shot trade union leaders. ^[1]

The furore over Rio Tinto's involvement with the military dictatorship in Spain eventually subsided, allowing the company to operate in relative obscurity until the late 1970s, when its dealings with the South African apartheid regime brought it international attention - and condemnation. Rio Tinto was found to be illegally mining Namibian uranium at Rossing, in breach of UN resolutions. It was subsequently revealed that apart from the illegal mining operations, profits from the mine were being used to help finance the 70,000 South African troops occupying Namibia.

Whilst the Namibian operation gained much attention, other disputes - particularly with Aboriginal people in Weipa and Mapoon in Queensland, went largely unnoticed outside of Australia. Aboriginal people protested not only at the loss of their land to the company's bauxite mine, which led to their enforced “resettlement”, but also to the desecration of their sacred sites.

Throughout the 1980s, campaigns against the company sprang up in many countries. From native Indian groups in Canada, through to opposition from Maori people in New Zealand - Rio Tinto was condemned the length and breadth of the planet. One of more recent controversies centres on the Freeport/Rio Tinto copper mine in West Papua (Irian Jaya) where company security staff – and company money – have aided the Indonesian military in suppressing opposition to the mine's operations. Independent aid agencies have evidence that people have been tortured and killed for the expansion of the mine - in which Rio Tinto has a significantly stakeholding.

Rio Tinto survives and prospers because it is a corporation with financial and political influence. Through its trade in uranium it has gained powerful allies in the key western nuclear weapons states - France, the UK and the US. Within Australia it is a leading member of the Business Council of Australia and of the Minerals Council of Australia. Rio Tinto's conduct sets a benchmark for other corporations, both within Australia and overseas. However, the benchmark set by Rio Tinto is often well below standard. The active opposition and vocal criticism by indigenous communities, environment groups, trade unions, human rights agencies and many churches attest to Rio Tinto's failure to properly adress human and workers rights and environmental protection.

How Rio Tinto performs in the coming years as a global corporate citizen, and how its individual operations are viewed as part of the overall international behaviour of the company, will have as much impact on its financial fortunes as the value of its commodities or the fluctuations of currencies.

Footnotes

^[1] `Rivers of Tears', Richard West, Earth Island Press, London, 1972.