Perth

COAL prices may be recovering, but there are no celebrations in the mining town of Collie, Western Australia, where workers are fighting Indian conglomerate Lanco Infratech over plans to slash their wages almost in half.

The move to cut pay at Lanco's Griffin Coal mine comes five years after the peak of a commodity price boom that saw miners, truck drivers and even cleaners earning six-figure incomes in Australia's remote outback mines and offshore oil and gas fields.