MONTREAL - Editorial employees at the Montreal Gazette, the city's only English-language daily, overwhelmingly rejected the company's latest contract offer on Sunday.
Eighty per cent of editorial and customer service employees at the newspaper voted against the offer, as did 73 per cent of employees in reader sales and service.
Sixty-five per cent of employees in advertising accepted the proposal.
More than 180 workers at the Gazette have been without a contract since last July.
Montreal Newspaper Guild vice-president Irwin Block said the union is not going to use the strike mandate it was given last September.
"We're hoping to go back to the bargaining table and get an improved offer," Block said.
"A lockout or a strike would be extremely detrimental to the paper. It would affect the content, the readership and circulation. It will affect advertisers. We hope the company will take a positive second look at this proposal and try to iron out what separates us."
Gazette publisher Alan Allnutt refused to comment on reports the newspaper will lock out its employees.
"We're obviously very happy the advertising group accepted the offer," he said in an interview.
"We'll be moving quickly to finalize their new contract and we'll figure out where we'll go from here with the editorial (on Monday)."
Part of the dispute is over the outsourcing of editorial and customer service jobs to Hamilton, Ont., and Winnipeg, where the newspaper's owner, Canwest Global Communications Corp. (TSX:CGS), is based.
Block said the contract offer, if accepted, would allow the newspaper to expand the outsourcing of pagination, editing, picture-handling and headline-writing services.
Canwest, which owns the Global television network and Canada's largest chain of big-city newspapers, reported a $33-million first-quarter loss earlier this month as its advertising sales were eroded by a deteriorating economy.
