{"id":887624,"date":"2026-09-11T02:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/887624\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T02:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:46:16","slug":"bhp-subsidiary-class-action-begins-over-public-holiday-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/887624\/","title":{"rendered":"BHP subsidiary class action begins over public holiday work"},"content":{"rendered":"

A class action has been launched against Australia’s biggest mining company, BHP, months after the Federal Court found one of its subsidiaries improperly required employees to work on public holidays.<\/p>\n

The Federal Court ruled last year that Operations Services (OS), a subsidiary of BHP, breached the Fair Work Act by requiring 85 employees to work on Christmas Day 2019 at the Daunia mine near Moranbah, in Central Queensland.<\/p>\n

The new class action, which will be run by Sydney-based AEN Legal on behalf of two lead plaintiffs, will be funded by the Mining and Energy Union (MEU).<\/p>\n

MEU Queensland president Mitch Hughes said the action potentially covered about 7,000 employees, which included workers who were employed by OS between December 2019 and March 2023.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

BHP subsidiary Operations Services employs workers in WA, Qld, SA and NSW. (ABC Pilbara: Kimberley Putland)<\/p>\n

During that time, OS employed people across coal mines in Queensland and NSW, iron ore operations in WA and copper mines in SA.<\/p>\n

“That’ll probably narrow down, depending on the scope,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Hughes said the employees’ concerns included a lack of consultation by OS management before allocating shifts.<\/p>\n

“In some cases, we heard accounts from the workforce where everyone’s name was simply put into a hat, and they were selected [to work public holidays].”<\/p>\n

He said BHP would typically run a “skeleton crew” across Christmas and Boxing Day and described the decision to keep the mines running at full production in recent years as “ruling with an iron fist”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Operations Services provides a variety of production and maintenance services to BHP mines.\u00a0 (ABC Tropical North: Danielle Jesser)<\/p>\n

In a statement, BHP said the “proceedings remain before the Court and no findings have been made in relation to the claims”.<\/p>\n

It said it would not comment further because the matter was “ongoing”.<\/p>\n

Mr Hughes said the court action was designed to build on last year’s Federal Court decision, which was specific to the Daunia mine workers of 2019.<\/p>\n

In his judgement, Justice Darryl Rangiah detailed some of the circumstances in which the miners left their families to work on Christmas and Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

BHP ordered to backpay for holidays<\/a><\/p>\n

The Mining and Energy Union wins an appeal, arguing the mine operated for the pure purpose of profit over the public holiday period.<\/p>\n

In one instance, a single mother paid $500 for a babysitter for her two children when she went to work.<\/p>\n

In another, a man missed out on time in New Zealand with his young daughter, who he had planned to visit.<\/p>\n

Others said they were able to spend some time at Christmas celebrations, but were forced to depart early to attend work, upsetting family members.<\/p>\n

BHP has appealed the Federal Court decision, which is set to be heard on November 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A class action has been launched against Australia’s biggest mining company, BHP, months after the Federal Court found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":887625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,6266,97609,134574,99,5503,36423,362073,30367,58725,70,457203,73846,27771,457202,212612,457204],"class_list":["post-887624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bhp","tag-bma","tag-boxing-day","tag-business","tag-christmas","tag-class-action","tag-coking-coal","tag-copper","tag-fair-work-act","tag-federal-court","tag-federal-court-full-bench","tag-iron-ore","tag-mining-and-energy-union","tag-operations-services","tag-public-holidays","tag-thermal-coal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}