Newly unemployed mine workers packed a union hall here Tuesday, looking for work, unemployment benefits and friendly faces after a Canadian company shut down its increasingly costly coal field.

“Those young men down there just kind of had like a glaze over their eyes, it was such a shock to them,” said Bob Guenther, president of the area’s Central Labor Council.

Calgary, Alberta-based TransAlta Corp.’s chief executive apologized to the mine’s 600 workers for the abrupt closure, which was announced Monday. But Steve Snyder said the aging mine couldn’t be sustained, especially with a spike in safety costs after recent landslides.

“We looked at all the alternatives and have been studying them for months now. And in the last few days, we came to a final reconciliation,” Snyder told reporters Tuesday.

TransAlta said the workers will continue to receive pay and benefits through January. The average salary at the mine was about $65,000 a year, Guenther said.

A nearby electrical plant, which burned coal from the mine, will switch to Wyoming suppliers. The power plant employs about 225 people.

The price of moving earth and hauling coal has climbed as miners work on ever-deeper deposits at the 30-year-old Centralia mine, TransAlta said. At the same time, a longer permitting process has slowed efforts to mine new areas.

This entry was posted by Mining News on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Coal Mining, Mining Services. Tags: Alberta, Calgary, Centralia, Centralia coal mine, Centralia mine, coal mine, Coal Mining, Company, Labor, mine, Miner, Miners, Power, Price, TransAlta, Wyoming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.