Every move they make – surveillance of FIFO workers exposed

Management at Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mining site in Western Australia have been sprung using drones to spy on workers, reports say. Evidence of the practice was revealed when a “daily productivity monitoring report” prepared for maintenance and construction subcontractor ECM was leaked onto Facebook and reposted onto major news bulletin site Reddit.

The document, with accompanying photos, details the “poor behaviour” of the workers being watched, including “talking and relaxing idly during work hours”. Underscoring the moron in oxymoron, the report’s author claims the drone images also show a group “idly working”.

The report proposes to deal with the scourge of idle working and idle relaxing at the Pilbara mine site by sacking “low performers” and banning “improper behaviour”.

ECM management has refused to comment on the leaked document, saying that it “is not an ECM document”, according to Business Insider. The report is signed by Eddie Moon, general manager of Samsung C&T, the head contractor for the Roy Hill project.

The spying revelations come just weeks after reports that 1200 Roy Hill workers were pulled off buses and searched by police with sniffer dogs as part of an ongoing operation targeting workers in the Pilbara. “I’m surprised everyone is not chained together”, one worker said on a FIFO Facebook group underneath a photo showing workers lined up at dawn for the search.