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Sibanye-Stillwater employees stuck in limbo as layoffs loom

Sibanye-Stillwater union members gather for a Steelworkers United meeting.
Kayla Desroches
/
Yellowstone Public Radio
Sibanye-Stillwater union members gather for a United Steelworkers meeting.

Dozens of workers from the Sibanye-Stillwater mining operations and their families filled the chairs and lined the walls at the union hall in Columbus Thursday night.

Local United Steelworkers leadership has been meeting often since Sibanye-Stillwater announced mass layoffs on September 12.

Sibanye-Stillwater employs nearly 1,700 people between two mines and a processing plant in south central Montana.

In a letter, CEO Kevin Robertson said the Montana operations haven’t been profitable in two years. The company announced it would be laying off about 700 workers, mostly from the Stillwater Mine near Nye, where the company will pause some operations.

Roughly three-fourths of the jobs on the chopping block are union positions, but Daniel Beluscak said who will be losing their jobs is still largely unknown.

“It’s a stressful time,” said Beluscack. “There’s no way anybody could be 100 percent on the job right now, and that’s what the job requires.”

130 non-union salaried workers received a 60-day notice of layoffs.

Beluscak said the union is advocating for its members at the table to deliver certainty as quickly as possible.

Heather McDowell is one of the people sitting at the table as Sibanye-Stillwater’s Vice President of Legal and External Affairs.

“[I] think we’ve just been at this point we’ve been really trading ideas with the Steelworkers, and I think that in the next few weeks those ideas will come into a very specific plan, and we’ll have some of those potential factors laid out in the next few weeks,” said McDowell.

Jason Cox works at the East Boulder Mine, Sibanye-Stillwater’s second mine near McLeod, where he trains miners.

“This is not a USW layoff, this is a Montana layoff,” said Cox. “This is gonna devastate communities, and anybody that thinks this isn’t a big deal is very, very wrong.”

Kayla writes about energy policy, the oil and gas industry and new electricity developments.