MEDIA STATEMENT: Fortescue class action

MEDIA STATEMENT — Tradeswomen Australia
26 June 2026

The class action filed against Fortescue is the third brought against a major Australian miner in two years – and Tradeswomen Australia says that pattern, not any single company, is the story the industry can no longer look away from.

The proceeding filed in the Federal Court this week, which seeks to represent thousands of women who worked at Fortescue’s Australian sites, follows similar class actions brought against two other major Australian miners in 2024. The same allegation now runs through multiple proceedings: that women were left to work in environments where harassment and discrimination went unchecked.

We make no findings about matters now before the court. But the broader picture does not depend on the outcome of any one case. Western Australia’s 2022 inquiry into the FIFO industry already documented how widespread harassment and assault were across the sector. The evidence has been in for years. What has been missing is action at the scale of the problem.

The women bringing these claims have shown real courage. That so many fear being blacklisted across the industry for speaking up is not incidental – it is part of the same structural failure. When the cost of reporting is your career, silence is engineered, not chosen.

This is also a workforce reckoning. Australia is asking women to help fill critical skills shortages across mining, construction and the clean energy transition. You cannot recruit women into industries that do not keep them safe, and you cannot blame women for staying away from workplaces the sector itself has failed to fix.

This is, finally, a question of leadership. The tone of any workplace is set by the people who hold power within it  – and the real measure of that leadership is the respect extended to those who hold the least. Every workplace leader carries a responsibility to actively build a culture of mutual respect and recognition for all colleagues, not as a statement of values, but as daily practice.

Quote attributable to Clea Smith, CEO, Tradeswomen Australia:
“Every time one of these cases lands, we hear the same reassurances about culture and values. What women experience on site tells a different story. The problem here is not a few individuals – it is structures that have tolerated harassment, punished those who report it, and treated women’s safety as optional. Adding women to unsafe workplaces was never the solution; making workplaces safe is. Real change is built inside these workplaces, alongside the employers and unions prepared to do the work – and we will keep partnering with those who are serious about it. We owe the women who have come forward more than sympathy. We owe them change – enforced, funded, and measured. That is the work, and we intend to keep doing it.”

Tradeswomen Australia is the nation’s leading advocate for women in trades, working to increase women’s participation and success in trade careers through targeted programs, industry partnerships and policy development.