Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has welcomed a commitment from Glencore that it will pay all entitlements to workers as it winds back operations at Tahmoor ahead of the mine’s closure in 2019.

Mr Taylor said he would also look at facilitating a forum for mine employees with local training providers and potential local employers.

“Many of the 350 employees live in the local area - If there is any upside here, and the union agrees with me on this, it’s that there has been a lot of notice from Glencore about the closure,” Mr Taylor said.

“There will be a number of people who will undoubtedly take voluntary redundancies, the first of those are not likely to be until next year. But there will also be employees, particularly younger employees, who will be looking for redeployment. Some of them will have skills that will be extremely well suited to work that’s going on in the region - there’s an enormous amount of investment in roads and the Western Sydney airport, so that will provide opportunities, but there are also others whose skills in underground mining won’t be well suited to regional jobs and they’ll need re-training. That’s where the government can potentially help, in finding people re-training options and making sure they’re well suited to employment in what is a changing economy.

“Glencore has indicated work at the mine will continue as normal until mid 2017 when development work will begin to wind down and a staged reduction of the workforce will start. I welcome the company’s commitment to pay correct redundancies to all affected staff. There’s no doubt construction work in Australia is moving from mining towards infrastructure, there’s different skills involved and we’ll need to help people with that redeployment.

“It’s tough, very tough for the families involved across Wollondilly, Camden, and Wingecarribee and we’re going to do everything we can to help them.”