Newsquest journalists in London are set to begin industrial action next Friday with a work-to-rule action agreed.

The action will be taken due to disputes over redundancies, pay and editorial decisions made by management at the company.

27 journalists are expected to be involved in the action, although NUJ members have offered to work an extra hour a day in order to improve the quality of Newsquest titles and restoring the amount of editorial space within its London titles.

Newsquest announced that it would accept voluntary redundancy requests in London in February following a reduction in pagination of many of its titles, with management citing market conditions as the reason for doing so.

Journalists have also demanded that Newsquest honours an agreed 2% pay rise.

Journalists at Newsquest Herald & Evening Times in Glasgow voted to continue to work to rule last week with 78 of 152 members agreeing to continue the motion.

Paul Holleran, organiser for NUJ Scotland explained the situation: “In this case the ballot is to allow the union to continue the action taken since January following the compulsory redundancies. The chapel decided to take all their breaks and refuse to work excessive hours unless they were given time off in lieu. This was a compromise which suited everyone and by and large has worked for most people. The idea of the action is two-fold; to make the company more aware of the impact of redundancies and short staffing levels; the other is to keep open the industrial action ballot legal immunity which will allow us to take strike action or step up action if they try and make more people redundant.”