BILLINGS – Moving boxes are piling up inside the home of Terry and Shanda Haney in Billings. But the boxes aren’t from when the family moved in, four months ago.
“We still have a lot of packing to do,” said Shanda.
The couple built their dream home in the up-and-coming Annafeld Subdivision in southwest Billings and finally moved in this summer.
“We’ve lived in a few places where we knew exactly what we wanted in a house, so we pulled the trigger on custom building,” said Terry.
A home to watch their young sons, ages 2 and 4, grow up.
“We got to enjoy it for four months,” he said.
In September, the Haney family’s world came crashing down, as Terry’s once stable and well-paying job at Sibanye Stillwater Mining ended.
“Very well paid, benefits are hard to beat,” he said.
He was one of hundreds of miners let go as a part of a massive wave of layoffs at the mine, and now the family is packing up their lives and moving across the country for work.
“We are leaving either Thursday or Friday,” said Shanda. “It’s a four-day trip.”
The Stillwater Mine in Nye struggled to compete with slumping precious metals prices, which prompted the cutbacks. Now Terry will take a new job with Oceana Gold in South Carolina, a similar move for many of the laid-off Montana miners.
“It’s scary and it's hard. We’ve never left family,” said Shanda.
Before August, the mine had about 1,675 employees and will keep roughly 1,000. One hundred five salaried employees are expected to be laid off, and 440 hourly. In addition, roughly 200 workers resigned from the mine since the company announced the layoffs this summer.
“We thought everything was looking... a lot more promising,” said Terry. “I think we were all kind of blindsided by the number of people that got let go.”
Terry worked in the bowels of the mine, underground, and he described the bond he shared with his fellow miners as a brotherhood.
“You build those brotherhood-like relationships with a lot of guys down there,” he said.
South Africa-owned Sibanye Stillwater is North America's largest producer of platinum and palladium at the main Stillwater Mine and its newer operation at the East Boulder mine in Big Timber.
Through the years, the mine has had its ups and downs as the metals market fluctuated.
“He’s faced a lot, and all those guys have faced a lot. And they work really hard for our families,” said Shanda.
The couple thought they’d be growing their young family in Montana but are now facing a new path. But with support from other mine families, they’re embracing this new chapter.
“Just in case, we don’t like the warm weather and miss the snow, we might come back,” said Terry. “But if everything is good, we will end up buying down there and selling our house next spring probably.”
The Haneys also say, they have the support of fellow Stillwater Mine families and say, many of them have also found jobs at other mines across the country in South Carolina, Nevada, and Alaska.
They also thanked the Montana Department of Labor and Industry and the agency's commissioner Sarah Swanson for help in navigating the job change.
