Workers at the ESB's Rhode power station have warned the company they will not be "bullied", following their rejection of a €20 million closure package.

Sources close to the workers at the defunct power plant say they have been railroaded into voting on a closure package over which they had no say and now want to sit down with management to sort out the inevitable closure of the plant, which has lain idle for almost two years.

However, sources within the company say the workers have consistently failed to discuss the closure issue, despite two visits to the company's joint industrial council, the last of which was designed to settle all issues.

"It's in their interest to keep talking," said someone close to events.

"The ESB is paying them around €60,000 a month while this drags on."

All sides are currently governed by a 30-day cooling-off period following the 59 to 45 rejection of a company plan to close the power station.

The workers say they have consistently stayed within company industrial relations guidelines and expect the company to do so too. They say these dictate that both sides now meet to talk about the differences that led to the rejection of the proposal.

However, ESB executives are understood to be hamstrung by instructions from the board to engage in no further negotiations with the Rhode workers.

Staff at Rhode say they have no idea of the logic behind the structure of the closure package and have been given no information on how staff will be reallocated within the group if they choose not to go.

"Both sides have to get around the table and negotiate this," said someone close to the Rhode staff, who say they have support throughout the country, especially with four further power stations due to be decommissioned in the next few years.

"If they don't talk, we have a problem."