Newcrest Mining is using ‘Fly in, Fly out’ labor for its Telfer mine in Western Australia. The workers are being sourced from the east coast instead of from Perth. The move signals a new beginning to the mining industry’s approach to employing workers.
Now miners do not have to shift base to Perth to be hired, they can base themselves right on the eastern seaboard. The company is the largest gold producer in Australia, and has confirmed that it charters two 100-seater aircrafts twice a week from Alliance Airlines for this purpose.
The workers are picked up from Brisbane and Orange and taken to the Telfer gold mine in its remote location in the northern part of Western Australia. The CEO of Alliance Airlines Scott Mc Millan said that many mining companies were recruiting workers from larger regional cities like Orange in New South Wales.
Mr McMillan said that they were seeing the start of a trend where some of the larger mining houses will recruit in some of the smaller cities on the eastern seaboard and fly them direct into various mines in WA. This would be a new style of the ‘Fly in, Fly out’ workforce. There were major plans for recruitment in areas which have high levels of unemployment in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria as per Mr McMillan.