Brisbane, Australia (CNN) — Lawyers for women who claim they’ve been sexually harassed while working for global mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto say they’ve been inundated with emails since filing two class action cases in an Australian court.
The separate lawsuits, which were filed in the Federal Court in Sydney and revealed Wednesday by law firm JGA Saddler, alleges widespread and systematic sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the two companies’ worksites over the last two decades.
Joshua Aylward, a JGA Saddler lawyer, said he had spoken to hundreds of women in the past 18 months who described accusations of abuse, many of whom he said had been afraid to speak out for fear of workplace reprisal. “Many of these women make complaints out on these sites. And it’s like it’s the 1980s where no one believes what has happened to them, or it is just tolerated,” he said.
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