The toxic contest between Glencore and the Queensland coal union has reached a brutal flashpoint with the global miner seeking termination of the enterprise agreement at the centre of a three-year dispute that has left 175 miners locked out of the Oaky North mine for 203 days and counting.

Glencore's move to break the industrial deadlock in Queensland's Central Highlands arrives with revelations that many of the locked-out miners have been earning production bonus payments right through their period of exclusion.