Global activist groups gather to protest Rio Tinto investor event
MINING group Rio Tinto held its annual meeting yesterday against a backdrop of protests against its environmental record.
Representatives from global workers’ unions, including Unite and IndustriALL, as well as the London Mining Network, gathered in London to draw attention to the firm’s transgressions.
IndustriALL’s Kemal Ozkan said: “The company systematically fails on environmental, social and governance factors and our campaign will continue until Rio Tinto becomes the social actor it describes itself to be.”
Richard Solly, coordinator of the London Mining Network, said that while Rio Tinto offers dialogue with protesters every year, “the pace of actual improvement in the company’s behaviour is glacial”.
The group, which knocked back a takeover bid from rival Glencore last summer, declined to comment.