(Bloomberg) -- BHP Group Ltd., the world’s biggest miner, expects to pay at least $280 million to rectify errors that miscalculated vacation time for about 28,500 workers in Australia.
The employees had an average of 6 leave days mistakenly deducted on public holidays since 2010, while 400 other staff in Port Hedland, Australia’s giant iron ore export hub, encountered separate mistakes related to allowances, BHP said Thursday in a statement.
“This is not good enough and falls short of the standards we expect at BHP,” said Geraldine Slattery, the company’s Australia president, who oversees assets in the nation spanning copper to coal and iron ore. “We are working to rectify and remediate these issues, with interest, as quickly as possible.”
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More than 60% of BHP’s total workforce of almost 80,000 staff and contractors are based in Australia, according to the producer’s annual report. Its global cost for salaries and incentives in the 12 months through June 2022 was $4.5 billion.
BHP will continue to investigate and plans to provide a further update when full-year results are announced in August. The anticipated $280 million pretax cost of the errors includes related pension and interest payments, according to the statement.
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