Mackay-based Mastermyne last year kicked off a recruitment drive in the UK following rapid growth which has seen its employment numbers rise from 130 in 2005 to over 250 in early 2006.

The company continues with traditional recruiting avenues advertising locally and interstate but with limited success.

“We are still attracting good, experienced, local miners to our organisation but not in the numbers that we need to satisfy the company’s growth,” company manager Tony Caruso said.

“We are all trying to draw from the same diminishing pool of labour.”

Information sessions in New Zealand were part of Mastermyne’s first initiative to circumvent the shortage but despite interest from 120 people the conversion rate was extremely low.

However, with the help of a recruitment agent the company undertook a very successful exercise targeting UK miners.

Initial interest from numerous applicants was narrowed down to a field of 25 who were interviewed by Caruso and company director Darren Hamblin. The company has employed 15 of those miners, who include electricians, fitters, deputies and experienced miner drivers.

The company’s transition from a longwall move specialist to having a focus on roadway development drivage has been a major factor behind the effort. The move away from longwall moves was driven partly by the drying up of available trained workers who could be mobilised at short notice for up to three months for longwall relocation jobs.

Mastermyne said it was a case of there no longer being enough of these kinds of people around, and that as any relocation contractor will tell you, it’s no longer possible to carry a big enough workforce to service longwall move jobs on demand.

Like the rest of the coal mining industry, Mastermyne had to grapple with the realities of managing a highly mobile workforce while trying to grow.

To carry out its specialist contracting jobs, which also include conveyor installation and roof support jobs, Mastermyne requires a skill set that includes deputies, mechanical engineers, project managers, mining coordinators, undermanagers and general trades.

While its workforce can sometimes become the source of new labour for mines, the company views this as a current reality. Rather than taking an adversarial position to prevent this occurring, Mastermyne tries to work with mines to control attrition rates in ways that allow it to keep workforce numbers stable.

The company has in place a good traineeship scheme where “cleanskins” are brought in and put with experienced mining crews.

However, as Caruso remarked, “You’ve got to have the right ratio of experienced to inexperienced people. So we need to keep topping up the experienced people to help train the inexperienced ones.”

John Botterill is one such miner with 25 years of underground mining experience in the UK, mostly in the Selby coal field. As an experienced longwall miner, Botterill said he jumped at the chance to return to coal mining after being laid off three years ago. He had been in Australia six weeks at the time of going to press and noted that mining conditions locally were a lot better than in deep UK mines.

Mastermyne takes a very methodical approach to how new entrants come into the industry and what they learn, with core skills mapped to the Black Coal Industry Competency Standards, Caruso said.

The recruitment exercise has allowed the company to build what it says is a sound recruitment model.

“We know that employing from overseas is not new to the industry but I believe Mastermyne would have to be one of the first underground contract organisations to have recruited under such a model,” Caruso said.

He said that a key focus at Mastermyne was finding solutions to issues rather than waiting for someone else to solve the problem.

“A common thread was there were limited opportunities for coal miners in the UK as the industry winds down,” Caruso said.

“We took a lot of time to understand the issues that would impact on these people and their families and also questioned the ethics of bringing them out. Were we bringing them out at the expense of local miners? We see that we’re not. By bringing out these miners it will create work opportunities for another 15 people who as cleanskins can work with these experienced miners. And that’s a good result for everyone.”