Bhp has underpaid workers for 13 years. The raw materials giant has to pay 280 million

Incorrect accounting of holidays. It seems like a trivial mistake, the problem is that it didn’t happen for a month’s salary and in the payroll office of a small company. But it lasted for 13 years and invested almost 30 thousand workers. Now, the mining giant Bhp Group, world leader in raw materials: copper, iron, nickel, potassium, coal, is realizing it. “We have a mix of assets for the present and the future,” the group boasts on its site. Now he also has a check for 280 million to sign to solve the accounting problems.

The story rebounds from the financial agencies following a communication from the same company. The holiday accounting problem affected 28,500 workers in Australia. These have mistakenly seen an average of 6 days off since 2010 deducted, which however were public holidays. Also missing are other allowances for another 400 current and former employees of Port Hedland, Australia’s giant iron ore export hub.

The count may not stop there, as the company itself says initial internal payroll audits suggest similar issues also occurred at Oz Minerals, prior to its acquisition by BHP in May.

We will have to wait until August, when the annual results will be released, to get a clearer picture of the story. For the moment, however, the estimate is that it will take just 280 million dollars to resolve the issue, with interest and pension arrears.

Geraldine Slattery, president of Bhp’s Australian operations, said: “We feel sorry for all current and former employees who have suffered the impact of these mistakes. This is not good and is not up to the standards we have come to expect from Bhp. We are working to correct and remedy these issues, with interest, as quickly as possible.”

To get an idea of ​​the size of the group, which has its roots in the mines of the mid-nineteenth century and experienced a turning point in 2011 with the merger between Bhp and Billiton, it has 80,000 employees and collaborators, 60% of whom are based in Australia. The global cost of salaries and incentives in the 12 months to June 2022 was $4.5 billion.

L’Australian Financial Review explains how the error occurred: an employee who had taken leave for the month of December would have seen his annual amount deducted even on Christmas Day. Which, however, is a public holiday, and should therefore not affect the available holidays. The error would be due to the systems that have not been adapted to the new legal provisions introduced since 2010. It risks going down in history, even if not at the levels of the problems that the supermarket giant Woolworths recently had, which underpaid workers for a good 600 million. What is certain is that – although Bhp itself has self-reported itself – this slide will not help industrial relations which have been rather tense in recent years, above all due to the plan to create an in-house division of operations workers who would be paid differently from others.