ABC reported that the mining union behind workers at Mudgee's Ulan Coal Mine will take its fight to stop the planned sacking of 120 workers to the Industrial Relations Commission.

Earlier this month, the mine's owner, Xstrata announced that it would shed staff to protect the mine's long term viability.

Mr Wayne McAndrew president of construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union's district said that Xstrata has already moved to implement 40 redundancies.

Mr McAndrew said that "Initially the argument has to be that these are not true redundancies in any event, when the jobs will be replaced by outside external contractors."

He said that the mine is hugely productive and doesn't need to put off workers.

He added that "Our understanding of redundancies is that they can only come about when the company has made a decision that that work being performed by those people being made redundant will not be performed by anyone else. From what we've been told, they will be reducing the workforce by 40 members and will be replacing the work that those members used to do with outside contractors."

(Sourced from Abc.net)