NORTH-EAST steelworkers at Corus yesterday voted for a strike ballot in the wake of imminent job losses.

The news came as another part of the region's industrial heritage came to an end.

Only a skeleton staff of 29 now remains at Cammell Laird's shipbuilding yard on Teesside after 110 workers were laid off by receivers called in to try and rescue the business.

Workers at Corus' coil plate mill at nearby Lackenby met yesterday and voted unanimously in favour of a strike ballot over the company's decision to close the plant with the loss of 234 jobs.

Corus this week rejected union pleas to keep the mill open and warned that staff would be out of a job by June.

Tony Poynter, chairman of the multi-union steel committee on Teesside, said of yesterday's meeting: "There was a lot of frustration and a lot of anger and some people were just very subdued. There was a whole range of emotions."

The unions are expected to sanction a ballot when they meet next week, and strike action could take place within a month.

Meanwhile, workers at Cammell Laird's in South Bank had expected to work until yesterday, but at a meeting with the receivers on Thursday were told they should leave straight away.

Union leaders are looking at taking legal action over the failure to give workers the compulsory 90 days notice of redundancy.

Stuart Boddy, for the AEEU, said workers were stunned at the speed of the redundancies, only a week after the receivers were called in.

And he said the workforce had only been kept abreast of developments by the media, with little information coming from the receivers.

He said: "We are gutted at what has happened. We have left without a penny and it is not our fault."

A spokeswoman for receivers Pricewaterhouse-Coopers said they recognised some of the workers were aggrieved at the way they had been treated.

But she said they were still trying to sell the yard as a going concern and already had a number of expressions of interest.

The remaining workers at South Bank will stay until work on existing contracts is finished - expected to be within a few weeks - before the last shipbuilder on the Tees closes.

A further 60 Cammell Laird workers will lose their jobs at its Hebburn yard on South Tyneside, although the yard will remain open.