BUTTE — At the McQueen Club, Montana Resources is looking to hire miners. I wonder if I could do the job?
“So John, tell us about your skill set,” asked Josh.
Well, I’m good at tying a tie and looking good on camera.
“We’ll be in touch.”
Well, maybe I better keep my day job, but if you want to be a miner in the Mining City, Montana Resources is hosting their very first job fair, because they need employees and for a really good reason.
“We’re still the richest hill on earth and we still got a lot of rock to move,” said Montana Resources Safety Manager Pete Steilman.
With strong copper and moly prices, MR is budgeted to hire seven haul truck drivers to move as much rock as possible to finish the year strong. The company is hosting a two-day fair to reach as many potential candidates as possible.
“We know there’s a lot of employees out there that are trainable, good workers, and this gives them an opportunity to meet us and us meet them, so we thought let’s think outside the box a little bit,” said Human Resources VP Mike McGivern.
The first day started out strong.
“There’s people showing up 40 minutes early today; we probably had about 20 people here today before 1 o’clock even before we opened the doors,” said Steilman.
Haul truck drivers do 12-hour shifts in a mine that never shuts down.
“You’re going from the shovel to the dump, the shovel to the dump. We have guys who have been doing it for 30 years and they love it, they wouldn’t do anything else,” said McGivern.
Trey Owens used to teach math at Butte High School and came out to the job fair hoping to land a higher-paying job.
“Really just came down to need to make more money if I ever want to like, own a home or something like that. From what I heard, I’d easily double my salary, I won’t be getting summers off, but financial future is more important for me right now,” said Owens.
The next job fair will be Thursday, Aug. 24 at the McQueen Athletic Club from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
