BHP, the Australian mining giant, has admitted to underpaying its current and former workers across the country for a period of 13 years. The company conducted a review which revealed that approximately 28,500 employees were not given the full amount of holiday entitlement they were owed. Additionally, 400 workers did not receive certain allowances due to an error with the employment entity. BHP has reported the incident to the authorities and estimates that the errors will result in a cost of up to $280 million before taxes.
Affected employees were found to have had their leave incorrectly deducted on Australian public holidays, leading to an average owed leave of six days. Geraldine Slattery, BHP's Australia president, expressed apologies to all impacted employees and acknowledged that the company's standards had fallen short. BHP is working to rectify the issues and provide appropriate remediation.
In response to the situation, BHP has initiated a review of its payroll systems and intends to provide an update on its investigations during its full-year earnings call in August. With headquarters in Melbourne, BHP is the world's largest mining company, employing approximately 80,000 workers and contractors across various sites globally.