The owner of the Grangemouth complex believe there is “strong support” for the company as the deadline looms for workers to respond to a new business plan.
Staff at the oil refinery and petrochemical plant have until 6pm today to decide whether to sign up to fresh terms and conditions proposed by owners Ineos.
Hundreds of workers attended a rally at the plant on Sunday as the dispute over the future of the troubled site continues.
The company has written to the workers asking them to agree to changes to pensions and other terms as part of a survival plan, but the union Unite has accused the firm of giving workers an ultimatum of accepting worse pay and conditions or losing their job.
The plant was shut down last week as a result of the industrial dispute.
Calum MacLean, chairman of Ineos Grangemouth, said the company had received around 300 positive responses from the workforce by Sunday.
He said: “We have several hundred acceptances already in. Today is of course the day that we expect most of those returns to be coming back after families have talked about the situation over the weekend.
“So we remain pretty confident that there’s a strong support for the company.”
Ineos has warned that the plant will close in 2017 without fresh investment and changes to workers’ terms and conditions.
Mr MacLean said the site has made significant losses in recent years.
“People need to realise that as a site, this site’s lost £150 million per year for the last four years,” he said.
“It’s got a pension fund which is £200 million in deficit and it is on the point of going bust, and if it wasn’t because of the support of the shareholders today, who are funding those losses, then there’s a very serious situation here which means the site may not start up again.”
On Saturday, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond repeated a plea for unions to agree to no industrial action and for management to reopen the site in order for negotiations to take place.
Mr MacLean said: “Alex Salmond’s been quite clear that he says we should start up the plant, and we totally agree.
“We have had meetings with Alex and we said that we will start up the plant as soon as the unions say that they will not strike. It would be unsafe for us to start the plant up in the knowledge that the unions could take it again down at very short notice.”
Around 400 employees, some with children and family, attended a rally at the plant yesterday in heavy rain and heard from speakers from Unite and other bodies such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress.