Working in Short Sleeves 1,010 Metres Under Saskatchewan

The people who mine potash a kilometre under Saskatchewan go home for supper, and the clock they work to is written in a union agreement. Place: Nutrien's Cory potash mine, near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Crew: Not published for Cory; a production crew at Mosaic's K1 mine in the 1980s ran 15 to 20 people (Kuchling, 2020) Rotation: 12-hour underground shifts, 7:30 to 7:30, day and night crews on a four-week cycle averaging 42 hours (USW Local 7458 agreement, 2020) Distance from help: About 1,010 metres of rock overhead (965 to 1,035 m), reached by cage; the service shaft is the way out The hoistman starts at 6:00, an hour and a half before the underground day shift steps into the cage at 7:30. The seam is roughly 1,010 metres down, and the machines cut rooms 3.35 metres high, about 11 feet, and a former K1 engineer put the air at about 25 degrees, short sleeves. Between the rooms stand pillars: no mining block may lose more than 45 percent of its potash, and over the life of the mine since 1968 the overall figure is about 24 percent. The agreement names no meal break for the 12-hour production crews, only for maintenance and lab shifts. At 19:30 the night crew relieves the day crew, and the night crews who began at 19:30 finish eight scheduled hours at 03:30 and stay four more to 07:30. When the shift ends, the cage goes up, and the people on it go home, as one Allan miner says, to a big city. On this shift: Ken Kuchling, mine engineer at Mosaic's K1, Esterhazy, 1985-89 - wrote that the underground air is "about 25C, so it's quite a pleasant short sleeve climate" and described the fresh walls crackling like rice krispies (kuchling.com, 2020). On this shift: Kiel Peterson, worker at Nutrien's Allan mine - wanted to be "home every night in a big city, not needing to move to a remote location" (CJME, 2025). On this shift: Brent Dauvin, Mine Operations, Nutrien Allan, 20 years - "It's the team at the face that does the work" (CJME, 2025). On this shift: Kelly Zeiler, construction supervisor, Nutrien Allan, since 1977 - "I went to sleep the night after my first shift and woke up 47 years later" (Nutrien). The ledger: Sleep: rotating 7:30-to-7:30 day and night blocks, no potash sleep study found · Pay: Mine Operator 1, $48.122 an hour CAD from 1 May 2021 under the 2020 agreement (expired 30 Apr 2022) · Food: no meal time named for 12-hour crews · Distance: about 1,010 m down, 3 minutes by cage on a 2013 Allan tour. Read the record: Nutrien — Cory Potash NI 43-101 Technical Report, effective 31 Dec 2024 (minedocs.com/28/Cory-TR-12312024.pdf) Nutrien Cory / USW Local 7458 — Memorandum of Agreement, 18 Nov 2020 (Saskatchewan Potash Council) Harriet Wegmeyer — Tour of a Potash Mine (Nutrients for Life, 21 Mar 2013) CJME / CKOM — "A fantastic life": Reflections from a second-generation Allan potash miner (2024-12-04 / 2025-06-03) Nutrien — The legacy and evolution of safe potash mining in Saskatchewan Mosaic — Saskatchewan's First Successful Potash Mine Readying for its Final Chapter (8 Jun 2020) Ken Kuchling — Potash Stories from 3000 Feet Down, Parts 1-2 (kuchling.com, 20 Nov 2020) Canadian Mining Journal — Finding the Canadian potash mining workforce (Apr 2025)