“In Collinsville when the fire siren goes off, the hair on the back of your neck stands up; you can be standing in the shopping centre with everyone standing frozen. Immediately your mind goes to where and if your loved ones, mates and family are working that day.” – Donna Bulloch, president, Mining Communities United.

Collinsville, in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, is a coal mining town. Locals say that most families have at least one person employed in the mines. It’s been that way for nearly a century. But in a move that could set the scene for a major industrial battle, Anglo-Swiss resources giant Glencore Xstrata has suspended operations at the Collinsville coal mine and sacked its 400-strong workforce.

Glencore Xstrata has no plans to walk away from the Collinsville mine or the Bowen Basin, which holds Australia’s largest coal reserves. A company spokesperson told a local newspaper that it believes in a “profitable future for mining in Collinsville”.

However, according to the union representing the sacked workers, the CFMEU (Mining Division), Glencore has said it won’t bring anyone back on under the existing enterprise agreement and will only consider employing workers on cut price individual agreements or under a single greenfield agreement.

Publicly, the company has made no guarantees that there will be any jobs for the sacked union workers; there are reports that recruiters have been touting for a replacement workforce on the promise that they will be bused in on coaches with blacked out windows.

CFMEU district president Steven Smyth has foreshadowed a serious fight, describing the dispute as shaping up to be “the Patrick’s of the outback”.