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Patriot Coal gives layoff notices to 670 Kentucky coal workers

Patriot Coal gives layoff notices to 670 Kentucky coal workers

Photo by Duane Daws

6th December 2014

By: Henry Lazenby

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: North America

  

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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – US miner Patriot Coal has issued 670 Kentucky coal miners with Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices, citing low natural gas prices and increasingly stringent US Environmental Protection Agency regulations, which continued to drive down thermal coal prices, as the cause.

The company on Friday said it would substantially reduce the workforce at the Highland mining complex, near Henderson, and the Dodge Hill mining complex, near Sturgis. The 670 employees represented the combined workforces of the complexes.

Together, the Highland and Dodge Hill complexes produced 3.9-million tons of thermal coal in 2013.

Patriot noted that management was evaluating various strategic options for Highland and Dodge Hill that could result in substantial workforce reductions within the next 60 days. 

The coal miner had in September issued 360 workers at the Corridor G mining complex near Danville, West Virginia, with WARN Act notices.

At the end of April, mere months after announcing its emergence from an 18-month-long Chapter 11 reorganisation as a well-capitalised private company, Patriot announced that it had issued 60-day notices of potential layoffs to 847 West Virginia workers at two mining complexes.

North American coal miners were dealing with weak coal prices amid low demand for thermal electricity-making coal and metallurgical steelmaking coal as competition from the emerging shale gas industry and slower economic growth in emerging markets impacted the industry.

Edited by Tracy Klückow
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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