Column: Electric dreams turn into a nightmare for battery metals
A sector that was once racing to build new supply has been closing mines and deferring projects as low prices bite into the cost curve.
Staff at billionaire Chris Ellison’s mining company have already been banned from working from home. Stepping outside for a coffee could well be the next endangered perk.
“I want to hold them captive all day long,” Ellison, chief executive officer of Mineral Resources Ltd. said on Thursday. “I don’t want them leaving the building. So I don’t want them walking down the road for a cup of coffee. We kind of figured out a few years ago how much that costs.”
Ellison was championing the perks of working at the firm’s two-year-old Perth headquarters, which boasts a cafe, restaurant, gym, creche, reflection room and wellness center. The 67-year-old mining veteran said that staff “loved working” in the building and its facilities “kept them glued” there.
“I have a no-work-from-home policy,” he said in the transcript of a call with analysts following an earnings update. “I wish everyone else would get on board with that, the sooner the better.”
“We can’t have people working three days a week and picking up five days a week pay.”
Ellison’s office policy is something of an outlier in Australia, where working from home has become the norm for white-collar workers. Many companies allow their employees to work remotely at least two days a week, with many parents embracing their new-found flexibility.
And for those juggling busy work schedules and children, Ellison said the company’s daycare center would charge just A$20 ($13.58) a day, compared to external costs of around A$180 a day.
“Drop the little tykes off next door,” he said. “We’re going to feed them, but mum and dad will be working in our office.”
(By Chris Bourke)
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