BHP Billiton will continue to source workers through external agencies despite a recent legal stoush over a rogue employment scam.
The mining giant was forced to take legal action through an arm of the United Nations earlier this year to combat a scam that solicited workers for BHP Billiton without the company’s knowledge.
According to legal documents filed to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, European-based scammers approached potential employees of BHP Billiton and advised them that the company considered them suitable for employment.
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The approaches were made using the internet domain “bhp-plc.com” — an address strikingly similar to BHP Billiton’s trading name on the London Stock Exchange.
The culprits had no commercial relationship with BHP Billiton, and the company fears they may have issued “phoney employment contracts” that purport to be on behalf of BHP Billiton.
The scam sought to capitalise on an era of severe skills shortages in the resources sector, where most large mining companies — including BHP Billiton — rely on external agencies to help supply labour.
BHP Billiton believes the approaches were an attempt to scam unsuspecting victims of personal information, rather than an unauthorised attempt to supply labour in a freelance capacity.
Melbourne-based patent and trademark attorneys acting for BHP Billiton were successful in the case, and WIPO ruled that BHP Billiton had the right to take control of the website and domain name that the scam was built around.
“The disputed domain name was registered for the purpose of disrupting (BHP Billiton’s) business, as internet users are led to believe falsely that they have entered into employment contracts with the complainant,” said WIPO adjudicator Dennis Foster.
Mr Foster said he was “convinced” the culprits were acting in “bad faith” when they established the domain name.
BHP Billiton is not planning to pursue further legal action as the company believes there is little prospect of successfully prosecuting the culprits.
Despite the incident, BHP Billiton will continue to use external agencies to source its labour.
The company already employs more than 40,000 people across more than 100 operations in 25 countries, and with significant expansion plans slated for the years ahead, the company has an almost constant requirement for new staff.
Revelations of the labour scam come after controversy last week over the tactics being used by other Australian resources companies in the battle to secure skilled workers.
Cashed-up resources companies are hiring workers on full pay long before they are actually needed to start work on projects, in a bid to avoid a looming skills shortage that is expected to peak in coming years.
The deals have been described by the Reserve Bank of Australia as exacerbating both the skills shortage and the problem of inflationary spending by one sector amid a struggling broader economy.
The recent WIPO case is not the first time BHP Billiton has been forced to defend its intellectual property and domain names through the Geneva-based organisation. A stocktake of WIPO records over the past decade shows more than 10 instances where BHP Billiton has launched legal action over breaches.
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