AS Cadia Valley Operations gets closer to completing its major expansion phase the company and the community must continue to adjust to life after Orange’s mini mining boom.
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Newcrest Mining’s plans for the underground mining operation at Cadia East have been know since planning assessments began in 2010.
The underground work was a massive project where the workforce grew from around 1100 workers to peak at almost 3000.
At the height of construction traffic on Forest Road heading out to the mine at shift change was literally bumper to bumper. There were seemingly endless opportunities, not only for Newcrest’s existing employees and contractors but for a whole new range of mine workers and tradespeople lured to the district by the prospect of supplying people, expertise and materials for a $2 billion project.
But just like the building of the harbour bridge, when the project at Cadia East is completed the need for a great many workers, employed indirectly through contractors and in some cases by Newcrest, will cease.
For many months now the community has been feeling the effects as the work tapers off and this begins to happen.
Right across Australia redeployment options are far more limited than they would have been when many in the mining industry arrived to work on Cadia’s expansion.
Newcrest has been forthright in explaining the scope and duration of its project from the outset. It has been responsible in detailing the extent of job cuts ahead - some 300 more workers will lose their jobs in the next 18 months - but it cannot prevent the inevitable.
The best Cadia management can do is phase out the jobs with as much notice as possible and give the council and the state government whatever assistance it can with job creation plans they have had warning would be needed.
And the community should appreciate that the expansion has secured the jobs and prosperity of the more than 800 workers who will remain, for at least the next 30 years.