Journalists on the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo newspapers are set to begin industrial action on Monday week after formally serving strike notice on management last night.

National Union of Journalists (NUJ) national organiser, Mr Des Fagan, confirmed last night that the union had served notice on the newspaper publisher and intended to take action when it expired on December 15th.

The workers are seeking an 8 per cent pay rise over three years, backdated to January 2003. A near nine-to-one majority of journalists on both papers voted in favour of industrial action in a secret ballot last week.

Mr Fagan said that starting on Monday 15th, the union would begin calling a series of mandatory chapel meetings which would call the 180 journalists away from their desks. These will effectively amount to a series of stoppages aimed at disrupting production. He said this would escalate into an all-out strike unless the dispute was resolved.

In a statement, Examiner Publications said it regretted the development, and pointed out that it had reached agreements with four other unions in the company. It stressed that it remained open to resolving this matter with the NUJ through normal industrial relations procedures.