The 180 journalists working on the Examiner group's two daily titles have voted overwhelmingly in favour of striking or taking some other form of industrial action in pursuit of a pay claim.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) last night confirmed that editorial staff on the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo titles had voted by a majority of 86 per cent in favour of a proposal to take any industrial action up to and including a strike.

Union officials are planning to meet officers of the Examiner chapel (branch) next Friday to decide its next move. A spokesman said that the NUJ would take some form of action between this week and Christmas, a key period for advertising sales, but did not specify what form it would take. He stressed that it would take strike action if necessary.

The bulk of the staff work in the group's head offices in Cork city, but a number of them are based in its Dublin office.

The union is seeking a pay increase of 8 per cent over three years, backdated to January 1st 2003.

It also wants the claim structured to bring the salaries of a group of lower paid journalists, hired since the mid-1990s, into line with those paid to their longer-serving colleagues.

An NUJ survey found that those on the lower scale earn an average of €26,000 a year, which is below the average for journalists working on daily papers. Longer-serving workers are on a scale starting at €33,000 a year, which is closer to the average in the industry.

The union has been pursuing the claim since the beginning of this year, and has attended a number of meetings with management at the Labour Relations Commission.

Three other unions, SIPTU, Amicus-MSF and the Graphical, Paper, Media Union are also pursuing claims. They have put a three-year offer, 3 per cent over one year and 4 per cent over the succeeding two years, to their members.