ENGINEERS who are fighting a lengthy court battle with chemical giant ICI now face an anxious wait over the outcome.

The 441 former Teesside workers are claiming £100m in compensation from the company, which they say broke pension and pay agreements.

The men scraped together £5,000 each - £2.5m - to hire a legal team to fight the High Court battle in London, which has lasted 14 weeks.

Cherie Booth QC, wife of the Prime Minister, is representing ICI and the two sides made their closing statements last week.

But the engineers will be on tenterhooks for weeks before a judgement is announced in September or October.

One engineer, who does not want to be named, said: "We have waited six years to get this far, so we can wait another few weeks for the official judgement."

The engineer said the men were confident they had proved their case. Many of them made regular trips to London to sit in on the court battle.

Their fight began when they were transferred from ICI's central engineering services on Teesside to Anglo-Norwegian firm Kvaerner, six years ago.

The engineers, who are claiming misrepresentation and breach of contract, said the new company should have paid them a 14 per cent wage rise for undergoing extra training, which was not delivered.

They said pension benefits were worth eight per cent less and that the new company no longer paid contributions to their pensions.

An independent audit compiled for the men by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers showed the workers stand to lose between £300,000 and £1.1m each.

But ICI claims none of the workers were worse off with Kvaerner and many benefited from the transfer.

"We are still pretty confident in terms of where we stand and our attitude has not changed. We await the verdict with interest," said an ICI spokesman.

* For details, visit the engineers' website at www.members.aol.com/windsor400/windsorclub/