CEMENT workers are asking Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene in the battle to save their jobs.

An angry meeting at Lafarge UK's doomed Blue Circle works in Eastgate, County Durham, yesterday hit out at company bosses for shunning efforts to open talks with cement manufacturers interested in buying the plant.

A delegation from Eastgate will go over the heads of UK directors and lobby Lafarge headquarters in Paris to keep production on the site, said GMB regional organiser Derek Cattell, who called the meeting.

But operations director Rob Davies insisted that efforts to sell the plant as a going concern were a waste of time.

He revealed that people interested in acquiring it for other industrial uses had already been shown round.

In addition, sister operation Lafarge Aggregates was being encouraged to look at the plant's quarry, where 7m tons of limestone is available.

Mr Davies said: "Speculation has left the workforce in a state of bewilderment for too long a period. For their sake we need to stop questioning the decision.

"The challenge is to get employees in the frame of mind to think about the future.

"We are working hard at creating employment opportunities and are putting a lot of time and effort in to helping our employees find alternative employment.

Mr Cattell said: "For us, this is a moral issue. I don't believe that what they are doing is for the good of the industry, even though it may be for the good of Blue Circle.

"We want the Prime Minister's office to become involved and to ask the company to reconsider its decision not to sell this as a going concern. We are still exploring whether or not the company is breaching any UK or European laws on competition.

"Shock has turned to outrage. Up to this point, the trade unions have enjoyed excellent relations with Blue Circle. That has now been soured. The workforce is getting a bitter lesson in economics."

A Job Shop has opened on the site and workers are being encouraged to look round Lafarge operations in Derbyshire, where alternative jobs are being offered.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the closure of the Eastgate plant will cost the Government £400,000 in lost business rates.

The French firm is the biggest ratepayer in the Wear Valley district. Lafarge Cement UK owns 1,235 acres of land in Weardale, with 50 acres covering the cement-production plant and a further 395 acres at a quarry. The remaining 790 acres is non-arable farmland let for grazing sheep and cattle.

A Lafarge spokeswoman said the future of this land and the properties on it would be considered by the plant closure team.