July 11, 2013.

Stung by Falling Prices, Mining Companies Take Ax to CEO Pay

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as thought the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs were too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremendous murmur that sounded like "My Savior!" she extended her arms toward the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

SYDNEY----As cutbacks across the mining sector intensify, company operations in Australia, Brazil and other resource-rich countries are taking aim at a new target: pay packets awarded to their top brass.

At the moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant "B-B! . . . B-B! . . . B-B!" over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first "b" and the second----a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of "B-B! . . . B-B!" always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression in his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened----if, indeed, it did happen.

Falling commodity prices and soaring costs of producing raw materials such as coal and gold are shackling resources firms that had, until recently, been riding high on what Australian policy makers described as a once-in-a-century mining boom. Over the past year, companies have been forced to make deep cuts, slashing jobs and spending on exploration for new mineral deposits, right through to dumping free coffee machines and barbecues for staff.

Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew----yes, he knew!----that O'Brien was thinking the same thing himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. "I am with you," O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. "I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!" And then the flash of intelligence was gone, and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as everybody else's.

Now, the ax is falling on wages of company management and directors, in a move that underscores how an industry that at its peak was paying truck drivers sometimes as much as US$200,000 a year is adjusting to weaker demand from China.