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Mining companies are seizing on the rhetoric about the need for metals in the energy transition to claim that they are key allies in the fight against climate change. They present themselves as enterprises concerned with the preservation of ecosystems, the prevention of safety hazards and the economic development of the regions in which they operate. The Rio Tinto mine in Andalusia, which resumed copper production in 2015 is emblematic of this shift. Beyond the rhetoric of “sustainable mining”, the ethnography of the Rio Tinto mine reveals the transformations underway, in particular the fragmentation and individualisation of working conditions, and the weakening of trade union structures. In this context, the article analyses how the management of commitment to work that accompanies the promises of “sustainable mining” fuels logics of (dis)mobilisation that oscillate between allegiance and resistance.