There is history of this sort of lockout and the ensuing capitulation of the unions
Robe River 1986 Lockout 10 weeks
The process started in 1986 at Robe River where productivity had been falling, and the owners found they were paying an increasing proportion of its workforce to be nothing more than full time union agitators. Initiating the reform took great courage on the part of the firm's management, especially its CEO Charles Copeman. In addition to desperate and vicious union attempts to maintain themselves as the virtual management of the facility, the local supervisory staff had little stomach to fight, and rival firms (including BHP) did not want the system threatened. Copeman also confronted intense denigration from ALP Governments in both Western Australia and Canberra.
In addition Robe River faced the hostility of an Industrial Relations Commission guarding the myth that it was the arbitrator of workforce arrangements even where it simply endorsed lavish conditions the unions had extracted. The Robe River dispute did much to undermine the old industrial relations framework and laid the groundwork for the vast improvements in industrial relations seen in Australia over the past decade. From the dispute, which lasted over a year, Robe achieved a doubling of labour productivity. CRA followed suit in its own Pilbara mines and achieved similar gains. The Pilbara, once notorious for massive overmanning and union demarcation disputes, has, until the recent dispute, become an island of industrial peace and prosperity.