Workers at Imerys, St Austell, are being urged to vote Yes for industrial action and so advance the campaign for fairness and choice in the battle over redundancies.

The Transport and General Workers Union confirmed today that ballot papers will be issued to around nine hundred of its members. They start arriving from this Wednesday as the union presses for rethink on job losses and a fair redundancy package for those who have to go.

Union members will be asked to support both strike action and industrial action short of a full strike.

Jennie Formby, the T&G national secretary who has been closely involved with the campaign, was critical of the Imerys management describing them as "intransigent, not prepared to listen to their employees and having no understanding of the bleak prospects for hundreds of workers across Devon and Cornwall."

"It is always disappointing when our members are forced by an employers intransigence to ballot for industrial action," she said. "Hundreds of workers will be losing their jobs with little prospect of finding alternative work. The majority of these workers have dedicated their whole lives to Imerys, many of them with thirty or forty years service and a tradition of clay mining in their families going back over several generations. They deserve far better than the company, an immensely wealthy multinational, has been prepared to give them."

Ms Formby said Imerys management had been given every opportunity to negotiate improvements and to work with the T&G to find an acceptable settlement. Instead they had chosen to ignore the deep feelings of the workforce.

In a newsletter to members she emphasised the differences between redundancy packages in France and the UK as well as the continued profitability of Imerys.

" When Imerys workers in France were made redundant last year, the package paid to them was considerably higher than the one being offered in the UK.

" The company says they can't afford any improvements as they have made such substantial losses last year. But the T&G says when restructuring costs are removed there is a £16m profit.

" Life will go on for Imerys but the redundancy package may well be the last earnings many workers are likely to receive in their lifetime.

The postal ballot starts on Wednesday and ends on Friday February 23.