Furious workers launched a protest last month when it emerged they were unlikely to receive payouts despite owning 37% of the firm via an employees’ trust.

But the company has had a change of heart and will now hand-out cash and share windfalls to the firm’s 4,000 staff from the £60m cash reserves of the Eaga Partnership Trust.

The trust’s board had originally voted to forgo cash payment following the sale and transfer its holding into Carillion shares.

But that sparked fury among workers and a protest campaign has prompted the change of heart.

Trust chairman Ken Temple told the Journal Live that the trust has now decided to make the payout after a staff survey by the Eaga Partners’ Council.

Staff will now get up to £6,000 in cash before tax and national insurance if they have been at the company since June 2007, plus the £3,000 maximum which the Inland Revenue allows companies to put into a Share Incentive Plan.

Temple said: “We were very pleased that in the survey the partners saw the benefit of the takeover, but the other results were perhaps not surprising, coming against the background of the expectation that the change of management would result in a big cash payout.”