MONTREAL – After abandoning negotiations with its employer last month the union representing workers at Quebec’s largest private network TVA will present a counter offer to the employer Friday.

In early May Quebecor’s Groupe TVA and the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 687 halted talks after more than a dozen meetings conducted with the help of a federal mediator. The union represents 800 people working at LCN, TVA and Argent networks.

On May 19, the employer made a counter offer which union members recently rejected by a very small margin – only 51%, union spokesman Alexandre Boulerice tells Playback Daily. ”The atmosphere in the workplace isn’t great. There is tension between the managers and workers.”

Groupe TVA’s offer proposed maintaining the current collective agreement and offered a salary increase of between 1.3% and 3%.

But the union wants Groupe TVA, which is owned by Quebecor, to ‘recuperate’ 130 permanent jobs — which have recently been replaced by contract or freelance workers. It also wants the collective agreement to cover platforms such as cellphones and the Internet.

If the two sides don’t come to an agreement in the coming weeks, the union can ask for a mandate to strike on June 20 and Groupe TVA can request permission to lock out employees.