PETROLIA — Union and company negotiators were to return to the bargaining table this morning in hopes of ending a two-and-a-half month lockout at the Indspec chemical plant.

Neither side, however, was willing to predict if the latest round of talks could help end the impasse.

“I’m hoping there’s movement and things get resolved but we won’t know that until we meet,” Ron Bowser, president of United Steelworkers of America, Local 6346-25, said Monday.

Bowser said negotiators for the union, which represents 175 full-time workers, presented their latest offer to Indspec counterparts, during a conference call about two weeks ago.

The union is expected to learn the company’s response to that proposal at today’s session, to be held at the Days Inn in Butler Township.

“It is our hope that we are able to reach a fair contract which allows Indspec to respond to aggressive import competition and return the business to profitability,” said company spokesman Eric Moses in an e-mail Friday.

He declined to comment on the union offer or discuss the specific issues in dispute.

Indspec, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., locked out workers April 5 after they turned down contract changes the company sought.

The company nixed a union proposal that sought to keep workers on the job under the terms of the former three-year contract during negotiations for a new pact.

Bowser said among the concessions sought by Indspec are pay cuts that would affect some 30 lower-grade jobs at the plant and a reduction in employee personal days, also known as “floating holidays,” from five to one.

Holiday scheduling, overtime assignments, job shift scheduling and health insurance are other issues at play, USW officials said.

The union’s latest proposal comes two months after its rank-and-file rejected a revised offer by the company.

Indspec earlier this month hired 22 temporary workers to supplement the 30 managerial employees at the plant. Union officials said they were disappointed but not surprised by the decision.

“They have to bring people in to use as leverage,” Bowser said. “That’s just part of it.”

Moses did not respond to an e-mail inquiry Monday about the company’s move to hire temporary workers.

Meanwhile, an international delegation of leaders representing each of the USW’s 13 districts in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean rallied June 19 outside the Inspect plant to support locked out workers and their families

“The community is behind us and everyone is standing together,” said Ben Page, an Indspec employee and shop steward. “There’s a strong feeling of solidarity.”