JOURNALISTS at Glasgow-based newspapers the Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald have voted unanimously to ballot for industrial action over a 20 per cent cut in editorial jobs.

Owner Newsquest’s latest round of redundancies could threaten up to 20 jobs. It follows job cuts at Newsquest’s Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Bournemouth publications.

“This treadmill of redundancies cannot continue. I have told Newsquest it is not sustainable to keep cutting jobs without putting a robust alternative structure in place,” said NUJ national organiser Paul Holleran

“They should just seek an interested buyer and sell the titles if their plan is to shrink the business to nothing.”

Newsquest told the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) that “newspaper revenues are declining and there is a need to cut costs and increase efficiency” but staff responded that the lack of efficiency was down to staff shortages and journalists working excessive hours as a result of poor management.

The US-owned publisher also announced that it would cut its newly acquired Romanes Group by 20 per cent.

The group has turned a deficit into a profit of over £4 million in the last five years and has not made any editorial redundancies in recent years.

The NUJ expects a similar response from Romanes Group staff and will travel across Scotland to address union chapels at weekly titles based in Ardrossan, Clydebank and Dunfermline as well as the daily Greenock Telegraph.