Booming mining's no longer the pits
EVERY time Sue Gogilis starts her shift driving the company truck she gives her steering wheel a good rub with a few disinfectant wipes.
Gogilis, a 34-year-old mother of two, was a dental assistant until last May. Now she drives a mammoth dump truck at one of Rio Tinto's iron ore mines, hauling 230 tonnes of rock and dirt across the scorching Pilbara region in Australia's outback.
"They need the bodies," she said. "And so if there's a body, they don't care if it's male or female as long as it can drive the truck."
From the pits of Australia to the coalfields of Wyoming, mining companies like Rio Tinto are hunting for people to address a dire shortage of workers. A decade ago, with prices slumping, the sense of mining as a sunset industry left it with a workforce with grey hair under its hard hats.
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