February 23, 2025 - Following numerous reports of people being laid off from the Leer South Mine in Barbour County, Core Natural Resources Inc. has issued a statement.

The statement reads as follows:

Wolf Run Mining, LLC, a subsidiary of Core Natural Resources, Inc. announced a decision to reduce its workforce at the Leer South mine located in Barbour County, WV, impacting approximately 165 employees across multiple departments. This decision is a result of the ongoing downturn in metallurgical coal markets globally causing economic challenges and is necessary to ensure the mine’s long-term sustainability and competitiveness.

A quarterly report for Core Natural Resources, the company that acquired Leer South in a merger, was released Wednesday and showed that an underground fire at the mine in January cost the company roughly $30 million. It is unknown if this had anything to do with the layoffs.

Multiple reports began coming in to 12 News from now former employees on Friday, who claim they were given no warning about the layoffs.

One such employee, Justin Carr, spoke to 12 News via phone and said that he was not made aware that he was being laid off until he received the phone call on Friday.

“Got a phone call from the HR person there, she said ‘I got bad news, your job position has been terminated,'” Carr said.

When he was asked if the company had given him any explanation as to why, Carr told 12 News “No, not really. They just said that they had decisions to make and budget cuts, and they were getting rid of a lot of people.”

Carr further described receiving the phone call as “rough”, especially because after the fire, he and others were assured that their jobs were safe.

“Originally they told us that we would be paid 40 hours a week throughout the entire thing until the mine was back open,” Carr said. “And then two weeks later we had another meeting. They told us then that we’d either have to transfer to different mines, most of which were out of state…or take low earnings.”

Carr then said that rumors began to circulate that employees would be getting at call back a week or two after that meeting, which they believed would be a call to return to work. Instead, many were told their jobs were terminated.

“There was no warning about a termination,” Carr clarified. “As far as we knew everybody was under this understanding that we were going back to work by the end of this month or the beginning of next.”

Carr also spoke about the financial strain this will put on him, and how hard he worked for his paycheck and raises.

“You start at a lower paygrade as a red hat and then it goes up to a black hat, which is like an eight or ten dollar an hour pay raise, and that’s what everybody looks forward to, and then once you get there you’re doing alright, being able to pay your bills and take care of your family, and then you get a call that you no loner have a job, everybody kind of freaks out,” Carr said. “You don’t know how you’re going to feed your family or anything. You lose your health insurance and everything.”

Carr was just nine days away from moving up to a black hat, which takes six months and 108 shifts.

Carr’s co-worker Joey Taylor, who worked at the mine for around two years, said he was “devastated” to receive the call.

“If you’ve been in it for a couple years you know, you go and buy your house and a few other things, and then all of a sudden its just all come to an end,” Taylor said. “So you’re just trying to figure everything out, what you’re going to do next and worry about your family and stuff like that.”

According to the United States Department of Labor, The WARN Act requires 60 days’ notice of mass layoffs. The act states, “An employer shall not order a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the employer serves written notice of such an order to each representative of the affected employees as of the time of the notice or, if there is no such representative at that time, to each affected employee.”

12 News reached back out to Core Natural Resources for more details on the layoff notifications, however the company declined to make any further comment.

The Leer South Mine is a non-union mine.

A public information meeting with Leer South General Manager Larry Gore that was scheduled to be held in Barbour County earlier this month was canceled and had not been rescheduled.