UNIONS have condemned the owners of the McVitie’s biscuit factory in Glasgow as an “absolute disgrace” for issuing redundancy notices to workers as politicians and businesspeople try to save the site.

Nearly 500 jobs are at risk at the closure-threatened factory in Tollcross in the city’s east end, which opened nearly 100 years ago and makes confections including Hobnobs and Rich Tea biscuits.

Union bosses have called for David Murray, managing director of McVitie’s parent company Pladis, to be “hauled” before an “action group” panel of council, industry and union chiefs which was set up by the Scottish Government to save the factory.

Pat McIlvogue, Unite industrial officer, said Murray is “refusing to engage with the action group”, accusing pladis of taking a “belligerent and arrogant approach”.

Turkish-owned pladis has blamed “excess capacity” at its UK sites and plans to shutter the Glasgow factory in the second half of 2022 and move production elsewhere.

McIlvogue said: “Everyone except the company is working together in order to bring forward options, which could save hundreds of jobs in the local area. Unite is again calling on pladis to directly engage with the trade unions, the workforce and the Scottish Government to look at credible alternatives to closure.

“Pladis have a duty of care to hundreds of workers to jointly discuss with us what could be done to save jobs instead of this belligerent and arrogant approach which they have adopted.”

An online petition to save the factory currently has more than 52,000 signatures.

GMB Scotland organiser David Hume said the redundancy notices were an “act of extreme bad faith” and “a gross insult to hundreds of workers and their families who are fighting for their livelihoods and community”.

He said: “The rules of the game have now been changed by pladis – the clock is now officially ticking on nearly 470 jobs and generations of food manufacturing that has endured austerity and prosperity, war and pandemic.

“David Murray needs to be hauled by the Cabinet Secretary before the members of the action group because this is a profitable business with an innovative workforce that can and should have a future in the east end of Glasgow.”

The next scheduled meeting of the action group, chaired by Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, and pladis is set for next Wednesday.

Pladis acquired McVitie’s in 2014 after taking over United Biscuits, and is now the third-biggest biscuit maker in the world, the unions said.