One day, after returning to her room following a long shift at a Pilbara mine site where she was working FIFO (fly in, fly out), Dani Tamati discovered a drunk man hiding in her closet. Upon hearing her screams of fright, her male neighbours on either side came to her aid, and the man was promptly taken off site.
“I have had other situations when I was working on sites in Pannawonica [an iron ore mining town in Western Australia (WA)], and Paraburdoo [another mining town] too, but not to that extent, where I felt like I was severely exposed,” says Tamati.
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In 2022, two landmark reports, one by Rio Tinto and another by the WA government, exposed the extent of sexual harassment and assault inflicted on women in the industry. A final progress report published in June by WorkSafe, a government organisation that develops national policy relating to worker health and safety, noted that “unacceptable behaviours and attitudes continue to present risks to workers in all industry sectors and the broader community”.
“I see it in my group, Resourceful Women, all the time. I don’t believe it is happening to the extent it was, but it is nothing unusual,” says Tamati, adding that it is not only women but also men who are affected.
“Still, to this day, people, many in senior roles, choose to do the wrong thing to benefit themselves career-wise, and always have done, and that is just par for the course – but it is not just our industry, it is across the board.”
Before founding recruitment company THE resources HUB and career development community Resourceful Women 14 years ago, Tamati worked for more than 15 years across the mining industry, gathering insights and experiences that would later inform and drive her in these two new endeavours.
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By GlobalDataWhen she started in mining, women represented only 3–4% of the Australian workforce, but she says this percentage has now risen to around 22%. In her first job, Tamati says she was doing “anything that needed doing at the time” on a roster that required her to work 13 consecutive weeks, then take three weeks off. She had a punishing work schedule that, fortunately, doesn’t exist in the industry any longer.
Overall, she “loved” the experience and later took on another FIFO role, but says it can be hard to escape that now well-documented dark side of the industry.
Connecting women to mining roles
Pregnancy forced Tamati from the manual and FIFO side of the industry into administration, then recruitment, where she has remained ever since.
She says that those earlier years, before she established her recruitment company, gave her “broad experience across all the different divisions and areas on mining sites” that has served her well as a recruiter.
“I’d be at mobile equipment maintenance, dewatering, reception, accounting – I’d work for the mine manager and then emergency services,” she remembers. “It was fantastic because it gave me a really good grounding on what type of skills are needed for the positions that we were also recruiting for.”
Eventually, she decided to launch her own recruitment company because she wanted to travel less and spend more time with her four children, and do things differently to the major recruitment companies in the region.
“I actually care for individuals’ career development and I know what the client’s needs are,” she says.
Concurrently, she launched Resourceful Women, an online community “of like-minded women where knowledge, stories and experiences are shared”. It now comprises more than 40,000 women, offering newsletters, seminars and after-work drinks on a monthly basis – known as “sundowners” – to paying members.
Tamati was inspired to set up the company because women in the mining community who saw her working full-time in Paraburdoo with four kids and a FIFO husband frequently asked her: “How do you do it?”
“I realised there were all these women who had these incredible back stories, these great careers in a previous life, before they had children, and then they kind of lost their identity, but they still wanted to have some relevance to a career, but they didn’t know what that looked like,” she explains.
“One lady said to me ‘Oh, well, I am just good for stacking shelves at Coles [an Australian supermarket] and I was like, “no, you are not, you have got XYZ.”
Tamati supported one friend, a stay-at-home mum for 15 years, as she returned to the workforce in a manufacturing role. Nine years later the woman transitioned to a BHP apprenticeship and then to hands-on tools and scheduling equipment roles.
“She is still working FIFO, and she is living her best life, and that was purely because her marriage had broken down; she wanted to set herself up and she wanted to feel like she had career options,” Tamati explains.
People, especially if they don’t have family working in mining, often don’t know what companies are seeking, and sometimes companies don’t know what they need to look for, either, she adds.
In August, Resourceful Women held a seminar with 135 attendees, organised and run by Tamati’s 21-year-old daughter, Sienna. Part of its aim was to bridge this knowledge gap.
“There are so many transferable skills from similar industries like manufacturing, civil construction, and to a certain extent oil and gas and defence, which can be used in mining,” she says, “but often people don’t know.”
The organisation partners with companies such as Ozland Mining Services and Macmahon to help connect women with available industry roles, and is currently looking for new partners for future events.
“Most people that come to us want to work for BHP or Rio Tinto; they don’t know about smaller contract companies that work for those big companies,” she says.
One seminar attendee, who had been looking for a FIFO role for the past eight months with no success, connected with event partners and later received three job offers, she adds.
Retaining female workers in mining
Overall, Tamati believes the industry needs to do more to support women; not only at entry level but to progress and stay after having children.
She has found living in mining towns in the Pilbara “fantastic” and something she would like her children to experience, but admits it isn’t for everyone. High school children, for example, can face 80km drives to school or must board in the city of Perth. The alternative is working FIFO, which also has its challenges.
What more does she think the industry could do to support families? “I think we used to do job share very well. I don’t think we do that as well anymore. It is not on many companies’ radars, and it really needs to be,” says Tamati.
Generally, retention is a “major stumbling block” for companies due to a lack of forward thinking, flexibility and career development opportunities, she says.
This is something Tamati has experienced personally. She and her husband moved out of Pannawonica to Paraburdoo when she couldn’t secure full-time, permanent work, as opposed to contract work, and her husband was passed on for a promotion.
“I have done many surveys over the years to find real and raw explanations as to why people stay in the industry and it is nearly always career development,” Tamati continues.
“Generally, people want to feel valued, they want to feel like they are part of a team, that their company is looking out for them and will offer them something more than just throwing money or share options at them.”
For example, rosters can “make or break you”. “I have got a diesel fitter that only wants to work a week on and a week off, and our clients say ‘well, our rosters are two and one’. I think companies need to listen to what their employees and candidates want because it is a candidate-driven market.”
Apprentices are always an asset
“Horrible” commodity downturns can also burn workers, says Tamati. During these tough times, companies often decide to let apprentices and good workers go.
For example, in September, BHP Mitsubishi Alliance put its Central Queensland apprentices and trainees academy under review, while sacking 750 workers, citing the impact of high government-imposed royalties.
Last November, Albemarle sacked half of the apprentices at its struggling lithium refinery in Kemerton, WA.
“Apprentices are your cheapest labour and if you let them go during a downturn they are not there when there is an upturn. [Apprentices in] the mechanical trades are the ones the industry is always screaming for,” Tamati says. “That is when we have to get workers from overseas and pay for sponsorships, etc, when we could have had them in the palm of our hand.”
She adds that instead of making redundancies during these difficult times, companies should ask staff to job share, so they still receive an income: “You are keeping two people employed. Doesn’t that make sense?”
Tamati believes the WA mining industry has good opportunities for workers right now, with several projects expected by the end of the decade. In particular, the industry is looking for workers in mechanical trades, operators, geologists and mining engineers. However, Tamati believes it needs to work harder to retain these workers and entice women into the sector to fill skills gaps.
“Ultimately, the industry should be implementing more job-share, part-time and flexible opportunities to bring seasoned professionals back into the sector, and also to train and develop those people who want to come into the industry, because there are plenty out there,” she says. “It is a great industry to be in – I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”
