The social license to automate in the mining industry

The Social License to Operate (SLO) is an established term in the mining industry that means legitimacy of mining activities achieved through ongoing acceptance and support by a majority within impacted communities. A major technological shift is underway that disrupts some of the SLO pillars for Indigenous communities impacted by mining: automation. For instance, automation of heavy equipment, a sub-set of the broader mine automation, disrupts existing SLO notions for Indigenous communities and leads to new trade-offs for them because while it results in a reduction of conventional heavy equipment operators, a sensitive issue because this role is often the gateway to semi-skilled employment in mining for Indigenous workers, it can concurrently bring several new benefits which may strengthen Indigenous communities’ vision for a sustainable future. This paper aims to establish whether Indigenous communities impacted by heavy equipment automation must accept and support heavy equipment automation activities that impact them for these activities to be legitimate and thus whether there are grounds to speak of a Social License to Automate (SLA) in the mining industry. The methodology consists of a review of various types of literature interpreted through the author’s first-hand experience in the mining industry. The SLA exists in the mining industry and is a sub-set of the SLO; Indigenous communities must accept and support heavy equipment automation initiatives that impact them prior to roll out and subsequently on an ongoing basis.