This follows its announcement earlier this year that 450 contractor positions would be cut in Australia as it sought to operate the mines more profitably during the climate of lower coal prices.

A company spokeswoman told ILN: “Peabody has announced that it is reducing its employee workforce numbers by eliminating 400 positions, approximately 170 employees, from its Australian operations.

“This difficult decision has been made in response to near-term global economic challenges.

“The reduction has been made to align the company’s workforce size with other cost-reduction activities as part of a comprehensive cost-management review to secure the long-term competitiveness of our operations.

“We understand this decision affects our employees, families and their local communities, and we are supporting impacted employees and our workforce through this change.”

The announcement drew condemnation from unions, who have seen thousands of their members lose their jobs over the past 12 months.

The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union’s general secretary, Andrew Vickers, said Peabody joined the list of companies sacking workers while simultaneously ramping up production.

“We’ll be putting Peabody on notice after hearing mine workers’ concerns about the company retaining some specialist contractors while laying off full-timers,” Vickers said.

“It just adds to mine workers’ fear about the continual casualisation of the coal industry.”

The CFMEU is seeking clarification from Peabody about how many of its members will be affected and from which regions.

The union will also work to axed staff receive their full entitlements and are offered support from Peabody, Vickers said.

“However, in the long-term, Peabody’s decision today adds further weight to the case to ensure our mining communities do not continually wear the cost of investors demanding the

same returns as those seen at the height of the boom,” he said.

“At the boom’s height, companies like Peabody were falling over themselves to take advantage of the record market prices and in doing so, allowed their costs to blow out.

“With the coal price coming off the boil, the only way companies can keep investors happy is by ramping up production and slashing costs. Companies like Peabody haven’t yet reined in costs so they’re taking the easy option and attacking jobs in the short-term.”