HUNDREDS of workers at the Southampton factory of motor giant Ford may take industrial action in a dispute over pay, the Daily Echo can reveal today.

They are among 10,900 blue-collar employees nationally who have just rejected the company's two-year deal by a whisker.

Union officials at the landmark site at Swaythling, just off the M27, will now sound out the 1,319 hourly-paid workers, who earn an average of £23,000 a year, to gauge feelings.

Options include going back to Ford with a revised pay offer, work-to-rule or downing tools in a strike. It is likely, however, that any course of action will be decided by union chiefs nationally.

A further 122 staff at Southampton, who are white collar and salaried, are not involved in the collective bargaining agreement.

Southampton builds Ford Transits for markets at home and abroad. It has been the best-selling commercial van in Britain for more than 38 years, with more than 375 small and medium wheelbase units produced each day in a two-shift system.

A series of ballots involving hourly-paid assembly and maintenance workers were held at the factory in Wide Lane during last week.

The main unions involved - Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) - recommended members accept a two-year deal.

Ford tabled a 3.75 per cent pay rise for the first year, with a three per cent offer or the rate of inflation, whichever is the greater, in the second year.

The current contract for Southampton's shop-floor workers runs out on November 24.

However, any pay increase would be backdated if the dispute rumbles on past that date before being resolved.

A Ford spokesman said: "The company has made its offer, the unions recommended acceptance, but we have not heard back from them yet."

However, a TGWU spokesman confirmed the pay offer had been "narrowly rejected", and that national union chiefs will meet soon to consider the next step.

The Transit plant in Southampton is significant to British industry for it is the only vehicle made in the UK with a blue Ford badge.

Meanwhile, it emerged today that local employees are working overtime on Saturdays to meet demand for Transit vans.

Ford said sales this year are already up three per cent on 2003. According to the company, nearly two million vans have come out of Southampton since the first Transit rolled off the production line in 1972.

A number of companies in and around Southampton are currently embroiled in union pay disputes.

Workers at British American Tobacco, Royal Mail and Stagecoach South have all turned down first-offer pay deals.