A young father is killed after the loader he was driving plummets 25m down an open void. A 21-year-old man loses his life after experiencing a crush injury. Another young man is repatriated to his family in Ireland after suffering a medical incident at work.

These are just a few of the harrowing fatalities that have occurred at Australian mine sites in the past few years. Tragically, such incidents happen on average eight times a year, leaving family members, friends and work colleagues devastated – and often completely unsure of how to carry on with their lives.

The charity Miners’ Promise was born from the first-hand experience of this painful reality. In 1992, Helen Fitzroy lost her husband to a workplace injury at a mine site, leaving her with the emotional and financial hardship of raising a family alone, a time she documented in her book Just a Number.

Fitzroy noted the gap in support available for people in her situation and in 2010 decided to establish Miners’ Promise, a specialised, trauma-informed, crisis support agency. Since then, the charity has supported hundreds of mining families in crisis.

Growing demand for support after fatalities

Ideally, the service Miners’ Promise offers wouldn’t be needed at all, but the charity’s non-executive chair, Laura Benger, says it is currently facing unprecedented demand. Since October 2022, it has attended to 11 workplace fatalities on mining sites.

This, Benger is keen to stress, is not because mining has become more unsafe. Last year seven people lost their lives in serious workplace incidents in the mining sector, according to Safe Work Australia data. This represents around 2.4 people per 100,000 and aligns with an overall trend of falling fatalities within the sector. For example, in 2003, there were 12.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers; a decade later, that figure was down to 3.4.

“The increase, instead, is perhaps due to a growing awareness of the need to really support families in a newer, more holistic and elevated way than we were previously,” says Benger, who is also the CEO of Maroomba Airlines, which flies fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workers to and from mine sites.

After a death at a mining operation, one of Miners’ Promise’s trained support advisors will provide help to a family for as long as it is needed. This can be anything from organising meals, home cleaning, financial support, transporting the body of their loved one or organising a memorial on the one-year anniversary of their death. They also have child bereavement specialists and support groups for adults.

One care recipient has said the charity’s support alleviated an enormous financial burden and provided support as she entered "unchartered waters", not knowing the processes or legalities to follow. Another says the charity’s assistance was all-encompassing and provided them with much-needed peace of mind and a sense of hope.

Filling a gap in the sector

When a miner dies at work, the level of support given by the mining company to the family varies between organisations. Some will go "over and above", says Benger, flying families to the mine site to do a walk-through of where the accident happened, for example. However, there remains a "stark variability" in post-fatality care and support.

Some companies are further along in... their understanding of the emotional and practical support that people need during times of grief

“Some companies are further along in their psychosocial hazard journey, potentially, and their understanding of the emotional and practical support that people need during times of grief,” says Benger.

At present, although there is an increased awareness of the charity’s service, it operates largely without assistance from the mining companies, contacting families through its networks rather than at the request of the mine site operator. Benger says the charity would like this to change.

“We would love to work with all companies across Australia and provide a minimum baseline standard level of support across the industry, helping them build their disaster recovery plans, which would include calling us because we are the experts in dealing with trauma, grief and loss in these situations,” she says. 

The charity is currently actively supported by Argonaut, an integrated investment house, and various companies and organisations including Mount Gibson Iron, MACA Mining and Dirty Hole Designs, a mining streetwear brand.

Changing the culture of miners

Furthermore, Benger stresses that the care given following a mine-site fatality shouldn’t only be about the family but the workforce, too. In such incidences workers may be offered an Employee Assist Programme, which is a service for mental health support but one that is not trauma, grief and bereavement specific. However, Benger says she has known of workers witnessing an incident and then going straight back to work the next day.  

She talks about the special kind of bond forged between co-workers who are working together 12–14 hours a day, living, eating and working out together, often in 45-degree heat, that is unique to the mining industry – and why a charity dedicated to trauma and grief in the industry is needed. 

“You are going through a lot together. When we overlay that with a workplace fatality, you know, you are losing one of your own, you have got this really deep connection with co-workers; therefore, if you have a death that whole site is decimated,” she explains.

Benger knows this, having come from a deep-rooted mining family herself. From fourth-generation coal miners in the UK, her family moved to Australia when the industry was shutting down. Her father worked in the iron ore mines of the Pilbara region, coal mines in Queensland and in a FIFO capacity in Perth in gold and nickel, as later did she. Her brother and his wife are also miners.  

“We are all people. General managers and site leaders are often not trained to deal with the human-impact side of this. We can help the leaders understand the best way to talk to their people, guide and steer them through the process as the situation's unfolding,” she says. 

Could an occasional lack of care and understanding on the part of some mining companies be attributed to the macho culture inherent in mining, where bullying and sexual harassment have been documented as being widespread and pervasive?

“Yes. There is an Australian saying, ‘she'll be right, mate’. It is a predominantly male workforce and some of the soft skills, a term I don’t like because they're very important, are not valued or developed in some of the leaders, because, you know – ‘we’re digging rocks out of the ground, why would we worry about all that fluffy stuff?’”

It is a culture that has been under the spotlight in the past few years, but is slowly changing, faster in some companies than others.

“We all know that everyone has feelings, and this includes even the roughest and toughest of miners. If you chat one-on-one with a miner, the first thing they talk about is their family. What's going on at home? That is what's on their mind. So, you know, we can look rough and tough on the outside, but there is a bigger conversation there,” she says. 

Expanding support beyond mine fatalities

Funding permitting, Benger would like Miners’ Promise to become a more proactive and wide-ranging organisation, supporting those who have suffered life-changing injuries at work, not just fatalities. In 2021–22 there were 2,700 work-related injury and illness claims in the mining sector.

“Those people experience enormous upheaval and trauma, and we don't currently offer a service for them because we don't have the funding. Mining companies have expressed that this might be something they would like, but we are unable to deliver it without more funding,” she explains.

The charity currently survives on donations only as well as the support of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia, which donates an office co-location. This is why Benger says her main goal for the charity is to get sustainable funding from mining companies.

“My hope and wish would be that every mining company in Australia donates to Miners’ Promise on an annual basis, in a proactive way, so that we can expand our services and impact to meet the needs of the industry,” she explains. 

“It is a dangerous industry. The reality is people will get injured and some will lose their lives at work. We would like to be at the top of the company’s emergency response call list so we can support the organisation and their people.”