The Globe and Mail sent a revised offer to its staff Friday in a labour dispute that could result in strike action as early as Tuesday at midnight.

A bargaining committee from the union representing editorial, sales and marketing employees has asked members to vote this weekend on the latest offer.

The union itself has rejected the offer after talks with management broke down at midnight Thursday. No further meetings are planned.

The Globe's 480 unionized employees have voted in favour of a strike when the previous contract expires next Tuesday.

A lockout is also a possibility at the Toronto-based paper.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union says the newspaper is asking for deep and broad concessions, including a revamp of the workers' pension plan.

Management had demanded to change the plan from a defined benefit plan, in which employees are guaranteed a set income at retirement, to a defined contribution plan, in which the amount they get depends on how much is in the plan when they retire.

The revised proposal announced Friday would book new employees into a defined contribution plan while existing employees would be given the option of either converting to the defined contribution plan or increasing their own contribution to the defined benefit plan.

Union local president Brad Honywill says the change could slash retirement incomes by 30 to 50 per cent.

That is unacceptable for most employees, he said.

"They're not prepared to simply roll over and allow the employer to exploit their flexibility and create a new contract that's going to haunt them for the rest of their lives," he said.

Globe employees are fully aware that the paper has been hit by the recession and that times are tough for newspapers across North America, Honywill said.

Demands 'outrageous,' union head says

"These are well educated and very successful people working for arguably the best newspaper in the country, and what the employer is offering to do is basically taking them to just slightly above a can-of-tuna-for-dinner type pension plan. It's outrageous," he said.

The Globe's publisher wasn't available to comment, and the company's financial situation is not known because it's privately owned.

But newspapers across North America have been slammed by the recession and the rise of the internet. Several smaller U.S. papers have closed and the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe might soon disappear.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union and the Canadian Newspaper Association say newspapers in Canada are faring much better than those in the United States and they're confident they'll ride out the problems facing the industry.

But ad sales are in steep decline and readership has been slipping since the late 1980s, said John Miller, a journalism professor at Ryerson University.

Miller said Globe management may have few choices.

"The National Post is stopping publishing Mondays during the summer," he said. "La Presse is discontinuing its Sunday edition, so it's reached beyond the point where they can pare to the bone; they're sacrificing part of the bone."

Papers using overseas contractors

Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank says more contracting out is on the way in the newspaper business.

"Newspapers now have pre-print operations in the Philippines and another part in India," he said. "They're doing things to reduce costs in every respect, and we're probably going to be looking at that kind of thing."

Newspapers are working hard to attract readers to their online sites — but they haven't been able to get enough advertisers to follow to keep revenues up.

John Hinds of the Canadian Newspaper Association believes predictions of the demise of newspapers are overstated but concedes the industry does face a big hurdle.

"The big challenge right now is how to make the online aspect profitable," he said. "I don't think anybody has cracked the bullet on how to make an online product profitable."

With files from Margo Kelly