Three years ago, Protect Our Manoomin revealed the intentions of Kennecott/Rio Tinto to develop copper-nickel mining in Aitkin and Crow Wing Counties. We've spoken and written about Rio Tinto's presence and the high risk of environmental destruction to that area including manoomin and the Mississippi watershed. Rio Tinto has spent over $11 million in exploration in a 10 year period in Aitkin County. Their HQ is located in Aitkin. According to the following report, Rio Tinto, via Kennecott, has joined in partnership with Talon Metals Corp to establish a mining district in Aitkin/Crow Wing Counties. For background on Rio Tinto human rights violations, we've included an article from Corporate Watch.
From Proactive Investors United Kingdom 17.7.2014:
Talon Metals Corp (TSE:TLO) - Tamarack polymetallic project presents value opportunity
• We saw Talon Metals Corp yesterday in London to discuss their Tamarack polymetallic project.
• Talon holds the Tamarack project under a 3-year earn in agreement with a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group.
• This is a very exciting project with good nickel, copper and pgm grades, it lies on a rail road and would therefore connect to Polymet to the north.
• Some 38,000m have been drilled into the project since the first discovery hole in 2008.
• One estimate is for nearly 10mt of ore grading just over 2% combined eg copper, nickel and other metals.
• Management are targeting to drill for another 10mt of ore but are only likely to deliver 5-6mt in the first NI-4101 resource due is September-ish.
• Ore is around 300-500m so this will be an underground mine if it is able to get through Minnesota’s exacting permitting process.
• Tamarack is in an area where the watershed is towards the Mississippi and should not suffer so many environmental objections as Duluth where the ground drains into the ‘Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness’. Though, to be fair, Duluth’s plan to mine underground makes the drainage less of an issue.
From Corporate Watch - Rio Tinto: Corporate Crimes
Labour violations
From its earliest days Rio Tinto has been involved in exploitative labour practices in order to maintain high profits. The Spanish mines at Huelva where Rio Tinto's operations began was the site of numerous industrial actions and during the Spanish civil war Rio Tinto infamously applauded Franco's forces for assassinating strikers and a group of radical miners who occupied their mines. Due to their policy of operating only with high quality, large reserve deposits Rio Tinto's projects are uniformly large in scale with a lengthy lifespan. This means a large workforce with long term employment prospects, yet in order to keep profits high Rio Tinto has employed an array of tactics designed to maximise exploitation and prevent union activity. These attempts essentially amount to a company wide 'deunionisation' policy and in response workers of Rio Tinto came together in 1997 to form a global union to protect themselves against the company (the ICEM Rio Tinto Global Union Network). As former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke stated, What runs through as a common thread is [Rio Tinto's] philosophy that they want to see the trade unions out of their operations.
The Borax mine in southern California, run by a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto is the site of an ongoing attack on unionised workers by management, who are attempting to impose new contracts that would increase precarity and overtime whilst scrapping the seniority system, allowing managers to cut jobs, hours and pay at whim with little benefits for the workers. After voting unanimously to reject the new contract, workers who turned up for shifts the next day January 31st 2010 found themselves locked out. Rio Tinto has maintained production at Boron through the use of professional scab labour provided by security firm, JR Gettier. Borax management's actions amount to a pre-emptive attempt to destroy the workers' ability to take any sort of collective action to defend themselves.
Rio Tinto has also seen significant labour conflict at its Rossing Uranium mine in Namibia, where concerns have long been raised about apartheid-style discrimination against black workers. Conditions at the mine and the Arandis camp where the workers live were described in 1979 as akin to slavery. In the same year, miners went on strike after the introduction of pay awards that saw white employees receive 12 times that of black workers, an action that was broken up by police violence involving dogs and tear gas. Rossing management refused to recognise an independent workers union until 1987. In 1989, a Newspaper investigation found over 90% of black workers' earnings in the company's lowest wage bracket, which did not constitute a living wage. Most recently, workers at Rossing walked out in a series of wildcat strikes in 2008.
Environment and safety
Rio Tinto claim on their website that when an operation reaches the end of its life, we close it safely and rehabilitate the land, often restoring such natural biodiversity to the area that you would never know that a mine, smelter or refinery had once been there. The countless documented cases of environmental devastation caused by Rio Tinto's operations present an entirely different picture.
Rio Tinto's Grasberg mine, run jointly with Freeport McMoRan is located in the heart of Mount Jaya in West Papua. It is home to three of the world's eight remaining equatorial glaciers as well as a sacred site for the indigenous people inhabiting the region and dependent on its ecosystem to survive. Apart from gradually destroying huge sections of the mountain top, the mine uses more than a billion gallons of water a month and dumps 230,000 tonnes of toxic waste into the Ajkwa rivers each day, killing all plant life along its banks and contaminating drinking water supplies. Waste dumping into lake Wanagon, also considered sacred by the local Anungme people, will total 3.5 billion tonnes throughout the mines' lifetime. In 2000, the mine's waste dump dam collapsed killing four workers and sending tidal waves of waste down the mountainside destroying the local village. In a statement of astonishing insensitivity Freeport McMoRan's CEO Jim Bob Moffet likened the environmental impact of the Grasberg operations to him pissing in the Arafura sea.
Similar effects have been documented at the Panguna mine in Bougainville where around a billion tonnes of waste was dumped into three local rivers, killing all aquatic life before it was shut down by a revolutionary indigenous uprising in 1989. Locals claim contaminated water supplies led to birth defects and that mining activities caused the extinction of the island's flying fox population. Representatives of the Bougainville islanders filed an ongoing lawsuit in the United States in 2000 for damages caused by Rio Tinto.
In Australia, the ERA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, runs a uranium mine where over 100 serious incidents have been recorded, including 'unacceptable contamination. The Ranger mine was found to have been leaking around 100,000 litres of water a day with a uranium level 5,500 times higher than normal. An Australian senate committee was advised that the site 'would be impossible to rehabilitate', yet despite this ERA, which made a net profit of AU$273 million in 2009, refutes these claims and has stated that Ranger is one of the most environmentally regulated mines in the world. In March 2007, when a contaminated water pipe was mistakenly attached to a drinking fountain, management failed to warn workers despite being alerted soon after the incident happened. Staff at the mine unwittingly showered in the water, and at least three people drank it, yet when the workers sought medical treatment they were effectively sacked.
Human rights
In a bewilderingly blatant act of racist collusion between police forces and Rio Tinto in November 1963, a night time operation was carried out in which the entire aboriginal community of Mapoon were arrested whilst the entire town burned to the ground in order that work could begin on the Weipa bauxite mine. It took 35 years for a settlement to be reached between Rio Tinto and the displaced residents.
The environmental devastation and social displacement caused by Rio Tinto's Panguna mine on the pacific island of Bougainville (mentioned above) was so great that it sparked an armed secessionist uprising by the local population, who formed the Bougainville revolutionary army in 1988. After a series of raids, attacks on Rio Tinto workers and acts of sabotage the mine was forced to close. With the Panguna mine contributing 45% of Papua New Guinea's export revenue's the government was quick to act against the rebels, and in May 1989 sent in troops with 'shoot to kill orders'. Reports of human rights abuses over this period are rife. Between 1989-1990 alone, it is estimated that 6,000 homes were destroyed and 24,000 people forcibly relocated to concentration camp-style 'care centres'. Meanwhile, the Australian government donated helicopters, military advisors and Au $32 million of military aid to PNG. Under the Australian's guidance the PNG defence force lay siege to Bougainville, preventing any supplies coming onto the island, a blockade which was to last eight years. During the conflict and around 15,000 Bougainvillians roughly 10% of the islands population - lost their lives. It is claimed that Rio Tinto worked closely with the PNG and Australian authorities during this time, encouraging the conflict and colluding in the numerous abuses against islanders. Bougainville citizens have been pursuing a class action law suit in the US against Rio Tinto since 2000.
The Freeport McMoRan mine at Grasberg, west Papua has also stimulated vast discontent amongst the indigenous people of the area. The site of the mine, Mount Jaya, is considered by the Amungme people to be the head of their sacred mother, who has not only been decapitated, but is now having her heart dug into. Apart from contamination of water and food sources, many locals were forced to relocate to the lowlands and there has been a sharp rise in malaria fatalities. Keen to avoid a similar defeat at Grasberg to that experienced in Bougainville, the mine's management has pumped vast sums of money into securing the region around its operations. They paid $20 million over a 7 year period to Indonesian police and military, including payments to individual commanders and paramilitary groups known for human rights abuses. The area around Grasberg is now the most militarised region in Indonesia. Locals whose lives have been destroyed are faced with the threat of serious violence if they protest against the mine, there are countless cases of murder, rape and torture against residents of the region. The conflict in West Papua has claimed around 10,000 lives, but remains a huge earner for Rio Tinto, which made US $232 million from its stake in the Grasberg project in 2005 alone. Around 4,000 Amungme people have been displaced since the mine's creation in 1976, yet none of them have received any compensation from the company.
The actions of Rio Tinto Group worldwide exhibit systematic environmental and social abuses, which in their striking similarity and number cannot be reduced to individual incidents. Throughout all of the companies' operations there is a clear strategy of maximising profitability by any means possible, including violation of local and international law; collusion and funding of armed repression; corruption, lobbying and political manipulation; price-fixing; aggressive union busting; wholesale environmental destruction; and negligent health and safety policies.
Perhaps most shocking is the fact that Rio Tinto is considered by many ethical business rankings a leader in the mining sector. The FTSE4good ethical share index included Rio Tinto in its listing in 2007, whilst Covalence rates Rio Tinto second 'best' in the 'basic resources' category and 44th across all sectors. If a company with as deplorable a track record as Rio Tinto is considered to be one of the best behaved miners we must call into question both the credibility of such 'ethical' ranking systems and also the bad practice of the extractive industries as a whole.