COLUMBUS — Employers from around the United States with open positions were at the Stillwater Civic Center Tuesday for the nearly 700 Sibanye Stillwater employees who will be laid off next month.
“Nothing's really been stable lately,” Jacob Kamppinen, an employee of the mine, said on Tuesday. “This one is hitting a lot of people.”
Kamppinen, who has worked for the mine for over five years, knows he could be let go. That's why he and many others attended a reverse career fair, put on by Sibanye Stillwater, with over 60 potential employers on site, and almost 100 total when adding in the remote opportunities available. The career fair is being held again on Wednesday, Oct. 2 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m..
“I am originally from Montana, and I'm hoping to stay here," Kamppinen said. "I got a wife, two boys, and they're the main reason I'm kind of trying to stay local, because they're already in the community and I don't want to uproot them.”
Sibanye Stillwater, which is based in South Africa, announced Sept. 12 that it was cutting 680 jobs and halting production at the main Nye mine and reducing operations at the East Boulder mine near Big Timber. The company cited the slumping price of palladium, the company's largest output in Montana. The company says it will start informing miners who will lose their jobs on Nov. 12.
Staying in the county may not be an option for many, which would put even more of a dent in the economy of Stillwater County than there’s already been from the revenue loss from the mine.
"As we looked towards revenues that were generated from the mine over the previous, you know, couple of years, you could kind of see that the revenues coming in from the mine were down," Stillwater County Commissioner Tyrel Hamilton said. “About four years ago, three to four budget years ago, that number sat at about $12.5 million last year that number dropped all the way down to about $3 million So, significant amount of revenue loss.”
Hamilton said the local government took proactive measures, already anticipating what is now the reality.
“We went ahead and reduced our overall budget by about $2.5 million," Hamilton said. "I guess the simplest way to put it is the county has about a mill value bank of one hundred and thirty-two. We dropped out all the way down to one hundred and six this year. So we're going to be asking for significantly less mills from the property owners.”
The reduction of the $2.5 million in the budget came from the county's capital project fund, which means Stillwater is slowing new building projects, Hamilton said. County services and maintenance projects were not reduced, Hamilton said.
But Hamilton hopes their community and county continues to thrive.
“Little communities like we have here in Stillwater County, are great places to come and raise a family,” Hamilton said. "It's our hope that hopefully some of these individuals that work at the mine are able to find a job where they can still live in Stillwater County and commute to work or, you know, or whatever that case may be."
