In his latest Friday evening e-mail, Publisher George Hearst “applauds” the bargaining committee’s decision to take the Company’s proposal to the membership for a vote.

Hold your applause, sir. We’re recommending the membership soundly defeat it.

In his latest missive, the publisher fails to mention that his proposal would enable the Company to lay people off and outsource their jobs. Funny how that slipped his mind. 

He doesn’t mention that the Company has eliminated every driver’s job because it had that power (though it could not lay them off, most took buyouts.) He doesn’t tell you that in Brockton, Mass., the newspaper gained the ability to outsource work and eliminated every district manager’s job.

He also doesn’t tell you that the Guild proposed language that would bar the Company from creating ‘shadow’ companies. (That would meant they could not open an office down the road, or in the building even, and say it is a “separate” company called, say, the Design Shop, where all editorial and advertising art jobs would go.)

The Company refused to even discuss it.

George Hearst’s e-mails are interesting not for what they say, but for what they deliberately exclude.

The Guild’s Executive Board voted Thursday to schedule a vote on the Company’s “last and best offer” for 1 p.m. Sunday, June 14, at the Albany Labor Temple. And the board recommended the membership vote a resounding NO!

“There is nothing in this proposal to recommend it and a great deal in it that would harm workers, advertisers and readers,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “We recommend the membership send a strong message to the Company that they need to respect  their employees and their community by coming back to the table with a more reasonable offer.”

The vote was set for Sunday, June 14, for several reasons. Contract votes are always set for Sunday afternoons because it is when the least number of Guild members are working. Our members work at almost every hour of the day, and we need to make it convenient for everyone to be there.

Our union’s bylaws require members get at least 15 days’ advance notice in writing that a membership meeting is being held. We cannot send out that formal notice until one step is completed: The proposal the Company sent out as its “last and best offer” did not include all of the tentative agreements reached since negotiations began last summer. In our discussions Wednesday, the TU said its offer did include those items.

Both the Guild and the Company reviewed a list Wednesday night of  the various tentative agreements, and both sides agreed to check their files to see if we’d missed anything. (We found one thing on our end Thursday).

There are about 25 tentative agreements involved. At the session’s end, both parties agreed to review our files and share what we believe to be the final versions of the language of all those agreements. Once the two sides agree everything matches, we can print that up and share it with you so you’ll see everything before you vote. We have not yet completed that work ourselves, and we had not received the company’s version as of Thursday night.

The earliest we could send a notice out is next week, which means the earliest we could schedule a membership meeting is Sunday, June 7. That, alas, is the date of our annual picnic. The board wisely decided that the picnic — the date of which has been set since January — is no place for a vote. So we scheduled the vote for Sunday, June 14. That will give us plenty of time to get the complete proposal together, share it with you, and enable you to ask questions about it. We also plan to have small group meetings to share information in the days ahead.

The Guild’s Executive Board appreciates your patience as we get all of this together for your consideration. We think you will agree when you see it all that the proposal the Company is forcing you to vote on is unworthy of your support.

Before the Company canceled our contract, they were forewarned: That would open the door to us launching boycotts. They did it anyway.

So now the Guild has launched a Web site, cancelthetu.com. Visitors can go online and send an e-mail to Publisher George Hearst or they can click to fill out a form giving the Guild the authority to cancel their subscription. The Guild can then decide when and how many to cancel at a time. (By having a printout, we can also notify those folks when a contract is settled and we want them to resume.)

We never wanted to be in this position, but the Company’s bullying behavior is making it necessary. Check out the site, which also gives you a peek at the messages currently being displayed on our billboard on I-90.

The United Steelworkers Local 9265 called this morning to invite the Guild to speak at their annual conference.

One chapter of United University Professions donated $250 to the Guild. Another has signed up more than 20 people to be associate members of our union as a show of solidarity.

Sickened by the Company’s treatment of us, the New York State Nurses Association staff canceled their subscriptions. Other unions have called to say they are willing to circulate boycott cards or do whatever we ask.

The Albany Common Council passed a resolution in our support, and the Albany County Legislature sent letters to Publisher George Hearst. A slew of other local government bodies are considering similar resolutions.

Every day, the calls, letters and e-mails increase. The support is tremendous, and we are very grateful for every bit of it.

The Guild came to the bargaining table with a revised proposal Wednesday, but the Company wanted no further discussion and was unwilling to even listen to further changes. Instead, its bargainers demanded that its “best and last offer” be taken to a vote of the membership.

That would allow the Company to outsource any and all jobs and to lay off anyone regardless of seniority and without providing any guidelines on what workers could do to keep their jobs. It would raise employees’ share of health insurance costs 5 percent on January 1, eating up more than $300 of the $500 cash bonus the Company proposes. (There would be no raises over the three-year life of the agreement.)

Guild bargainers decided that, given the Company’s refusal to move any further, the time has come for the membership to speak out through its vote. The Executive Board will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday (which is tomorrow as this is being written but today as many of you are reading this) to discuss setting a time and location for the vote.

“We believe the bargaining committee has done all it can do up to this point,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “Now it is up to the membership. We are disappointed at the Company’s refusal to do what we remain willing to do: explore the proposals and make amendments to move us closer together.”

When one of the Company’s two out-of-town lawyers said last time that past performance reviews and disciplinary letters could be used in deciding who gets laid off, the Guild asked to review those files. In beginning that review, the Guild swiftly learned many performance reviews had yet to be filed, two out of the nine files we examined had the wrong person’s reviews in them and others contained extremely old disciplinary letters.

“We wanted to have further discussion on this discovery, which we made earlier in the day, but the Company did not want to discuss how it might use those inaccurate files to lay someone off,” O’Brien said.

In the days ahead, the Guild will provide its members with a complete list of everything in the Company’s demands and an explanation of what it all means. The parties had reached some tentative agreements on relatively minor issues that will be part of the package.

The Executive Board will also decide what recommendation to make to the membership.

As soon as a membership meeting date is set, we will inform you.