Union employees of the French-language Journal de Quebec in Quebec City, Quebec, who have been locked out of their jobs by owner Quebecor, have launched a free-distribution daily.

MediaMatin Quebec will be published Mondays through Fridays, and will emphasize local news, the unions said in an announcement. The first edition, published Tuesday, had a press run of 40,000 copies.

The Journal de Quebec, the city's biggest paper, has a circulation of about 104,000 weekdays, and 127,000 on Saturdays, traditionally the biggest-selling day for Canadian newspapers.

Denis Bolduc, spokesperson for the Journal de Quebec locked-out workers, said in a statement that "everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel" in publishing the daily.

"The expertise of all the locked-out workers, whether journalists or photographers, will be put to good use," Bolduc. What the union members really want, he added, is to reach an agreement with the Journal. Creating the strike paper, he said, should be viewed as a pressure tactic to return management to the bargaining table. …