Mr McNaught said he was hopeful more jobs could be saved

Alfred McAlpine Slate announced last month that 174 workers at Blaenau Ffestiniog and Bethesda would be made redundant.

But following talks with the company on Monday, the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) said the number of compulsory losses was now down to 135.

Alfred McAlpine has yet to confirm the new number of redundancies.

Paddy McNaught, T&G spokesman, said: "The focus of the talks has been to try and reduce the numbers of compulsory redundancies and we're making significant headway on that at the moment.

'Long-term'

"Compulsory redundancies on the shop floor is well below what was originally expected."

Mr McNaught said the actual figure for job losses was now down to 119 quarry workers and 16 managers and administrative staff.

He said the other 39 jobs would go by not filling empty posts. The union is also trying to further reduce the number of compulsory redundancies, and increase "natural wastage" like early retirement.

Mr McNaught added: "Hopes for the long-term future is good if they can stabilise the business.

"We've taken a number of hard decisions which will bear fruit in the long term - we're pretty certain of that."

The job cuts were announced last month following a difficult period for the company.

In February, two senior company managers were suspended after "accounting irregularities".