{"id":538708,"date":"2026-03-13T22:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538708\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:54:10","slug":"tahmoor-miners-grapple-with-job-losses-at-sanjeev-guptas-gfg-alliance-colliery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538708\/","title":{"rendered":"Tahmoor miners grapple with job losses at Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance colliery"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Jimmy Baker, the shock of losing his job at Tahmoor Colliery is still sinking in.<\/p>\n

“It’s been horrible,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s living in limbo for the last 12 months and not knowing if you’re going to have a job tomorrow, the next day, the day after.<\/p>\n

“Then to have it black and white that you no longer have a job, I’m gutted. Absolutely gutted.”<\/p>\n

The mine, south-west of Sydney, has faced more than a year of financial turmoil under Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance.<\/p>\n

Operations stopped in February last year and a winding-up application began in August, with the mine entering voluntary administration amid $250 million in related-party debt.<\/p>\n

On February 6, the NSW Supreme Court placed it into liquidation and, on Wednesday, liquidators announced 238 permanent staff would be made redundant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Baker, who has worked at the mine for 22 years, was one of them.<\/p>\n

\"Mine<\/p>\n

The mine has been mothballed amid financial turmoil surrounding its ownership group. (ABC Illawarra: Brooke Chandler)<\/p>\n

He had been part of a small maintenance crew still on site and said he was still on shift when the email arrived confirming his redundancy.<\/p>\n

“I got an email while I was at work to say I’d been terminated,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And then I had to work the next day because I was on shift.”<\/p>\n

Mr Baker broke down as he described leaving the mine.<\/p>\n

“To say goodbye to blokes and walk out of the place and drive over the hill \u2026 it was hard.”<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Mining and Energy Union (MEU) held a day of support and information for workers, including guidance on a brief window offered by liquidators to either take six weeks’ unpaid leave while the mine’s sale is considered or accept immediate redundancy.<\/p>\n

After more than a year of uncertainty, Mr Baker said he could not face more waiting.<\/p>\n

“I won’t wait six weeks,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s been enough to drag on as long as it has. I can’t take any more.”<\/p>\n

Decades-long career ends abruptly\"A<\/p>\n

Martin Sawyer says he had waited on a decision for 14 months. (ABC Illawarra: Brooke Chandler)<\/p>\n

For Martin Sawyer, the announcement marked the end of a career spanning more than four decades.<\/p>\n

“It’s been my livelihood for 40-odd years,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I have to go back today and pack my desk up, pack my toolbox up, pack my locker up and drive away, and I’m not happy about that at all.”<\/p>\n

Mr Sawyer started at the mine as an apprentice and worked his way up through the ranks.<\/p>\n

“I’m proud of the job I’ve done, and I just feel like a door has been slammed in my face.”<\/p>\n

The final confirmation arrived in a late-night email.<\/p>\n

“I received an email at 10 o’clock the other night,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was not something everyone wanted at that time of the night to go to sleep on knowing that there’s an email coming about your future.”<\/p>\n

For months, Mr Sawyer said workers had been waiting for clarity.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been sitting on my hands for about 14 months waiting for a decision.<\/p>\n

“It’s a viable mine and I don’t understand why it’s got to this stage … our best year for tonnage was 2024.<\/p>\n

“I put it down to greed. Simple as that.”<\/p>\n

He said he and his colleagues were “numb”, adding that “for me personally … life has been put on hold”.<\/p>\n

\"Tahmoor<\/p>\n

Workers say the situation is having a major impact on Tahmoor and surrounding towns. (ABC Illawarra: Brooke Chandler)<\/p>\n

MEU South Western District secretary Andy Davey said the speed of the redundancies had left workers scrambling to understand their options.<\/p>\n

“We’ve advised the members to potentially take six weeks’ leave without pay so that we can go through what’s happened and process what’s happened,” Mr Davey said.<\/p>\n

Community rallies around affected workers<\/p>\n

Wollondilly Mayor Matt Gould sat through information sessions and said he saw great despair.<\/p>\n

“They’re being asked to make some very difficult decisions and it’s obviously a very stressful and very difficult time,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said the community and some other businesses were trying to help miners find new work.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a number of people reaching out wanting to look at how they can employ them,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Karl Klein helped provide food for the affected workers. (ABC Illawarra: Brooke Chandler)<\/p>\n

Outside the meeting, volunteers were cooking sausages and providing fruit for the workers, including Tahmoor Lions member Karl Klein, who said the situation had left the community feeling “unstable”.<\/p>\n

“The mine was always our security,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Everybody’s watching what they’re doing and watching their purse strings.<\/p>\n

“We just want to help the community in whatever way we can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Jimmy Baker, the shock of losing his job at Tahmoor Colliery is still sinking in. “It’s been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,19165,235541,64308,62900,27771,16763,25234,37159,224866,145182],"class_list":["post-538708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-coal","tag-colliery","tag-liquidation","tag-mine","tag-mining-and-energy-union","tag-redundancies","tag-redundant","tag-sanjeev-gupta","tag-tahmoor","tag-tahmoor-coal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}