Workers who took pay cuts to keep their paper and packaging mill alive have been locked out of the job in an increasingly tense pay dispute.
Opal Australian Paper indefinitely stood-down more than 300 workers without pay from the Latrobe Valley's Maryvale mill after seven production staff took a protected six-hour stoppage earlier in January.
A spokesman for Opal, owned by Japanese multinational Nippon, said the company's hand had been forced.
"Unfortunately, given the protected industrial action taken and upcoming notified action ... we cannot operate our paper production facilities," the spokesman said in a statement.
Opal's response is also protected under the Fair Work Act.
Negotiations hit a standstill over Opal's plans to extend ordinary work week hours from 35 to 38 in a rolling roster that would include weekend work.
The CFMEU's manufacturing branch says this will mean more work for less pay, due to understaffing and the need for recognised overtime.
"I've never seen our members so frustrated and so united on an issue like this," Maryvale branch secretary Anthony Pavey told AAP.
"We took the action for six hours, seven people, and they stand-down 300 people, almost instantaneously."
Instead of taking on new full-time employees, Opal was covering extra jobs with overtime, he said.
"Our blokes and ladies have been working their fingers to the bone just to keep the place open," Mr Pavey said.
"So while Opal's wasting money hand over fist they're coming to us to claw money back."
About 100 contract workers employed at the mill have also been stood down during the lockouts, according to the union.
Industry, manufacturing and mining jobs in the Latrobe Valley have faced a death by a thousand cuts in recent years, following Hazelwood power station's closure in 2017, last year's ban on native forestry and the ongoing transition away from coal energy.
It's the mill's first enterprise bargaining process since the native logging ban was enacted, a change that quickened Opal's transition from white paper production into brown paper and packaging last year.
Maryvale had produced stationary and office supplies for the previous 85 years.
Opal said the loss of wood supply from VicForests and the end of white paper manufacturing had severely impacted the mill's operations.
"As a result, the site has lost almost half of its production volumes and suffered significant and continued financial impacts," the company said in a statement.
"The new enterprise agreement obviously needs to reflect these significant changes."
The shift from white paper led to about 200 redundancies in 2024 and came after eight years of pay cuts, wage freezes and reclassifications workers had accepted to keep the mill afloat.
Quality technician Hayley Langstaff, an 18-year veteran at the mill, said she felt let down by the lockout.
"I just don't understand how they could do it so quickly and so coldly," she told AAP.
"It's going to take Opal a lot to get people to be excited to be there, which is really sad, because it's such a great place to work."
She said work crews were close, tight-knit and often took camping trips and holidays together and "we'll get through this all together."
Ms Langstaff said management had been supportive in 2024 when a concussion left her son Diesel unable to walk.
"He was just playing with friends, hit his head, and then he just had no balance again after that," she said.
Through months of intense therapy, Diesel had to re-learn how to walk.
Her general manager shifted Ms Langstaff's start times to 4am so she could work her eight hours before running her daughter to school and helping Diesel with therapy and rehabilitation.
"He's good as gold now, but it was bloody scary," she said.
"My boss ... was really, really good with the whole entire thing."
Having barely recovered financially from the accident, the lockout leaves Ms Langstaff with no income just as first term school fees are due, but she's staying positive.
Dryer operator Maddi Jeffries' household has gone from dual income to zero income, as her partner also works at the mill.
She said the lockout hit hard after Opal had already cut roles, sped up machines and pushed workers harder to cover more jobs.
"We have put in a lot of work inside the gate to try and help them make profit," she told AAP.
"So it's a bit sad now that we're all locked out and they're trying to take wages off us when we've been working harder for them."
But the disappointment wasn't testing her resolve.
"We're not going to back down from this," Ms Jeffries said.
"Honestly, we're sort of all in it for the long haul, if that's how it goes."
It is estimated the company has about three weeks of stock stored in its warehouses.
Both Opal and the CFMEU have reiterated their commitment to talks and are set to meet at the Fair Work Commission for a conference on Tuesday.
