Staff at Independent Newspapers are to consider taking industrial action over a threat to sack employees who decline to accept a redundancy package.
Unions at the company are to hold a general meeting on Sunday, in a worsening dispute over the manner in which the company is making 205 staff redundant.
The company wants to outsource functions carried out by clerical, administrative, telesales, finance and general operative staff.
Employees in the relevant sections who fail to apply for a severance package by Friday of next week have been told they will be compulsorily made redundant on statutory terms.
About 50 clerical and administrative staff have been warned that if they refuse to either accept the severance package or to relocate from Dublin, they will be considered to have resigned and will receive no redundancy.
Their jobs are being outsourced to locations in Cork, Armagh and Hertfordshire in England.
The National Implementation Body met this week to discuss the growing row and said afterwards it would be maintaining contact with both sides.
A SIPTU regional secretary, Ms Patricia King, said she did not wish to pre-empt the outcome of Sunday's general meeting, but industrial action was one of the options that would be discussed.
She criticised the company for its failure to attend a recent meeting called by the NIB and its decision to refuse an invitation by the Labour Court this week to attend talks.
"By snubbing the Labour Court and the NIB, the management at Independent Newspapers has shown complete contempt for the State's industrial relations machinery," she said.
However, a spokesman for the company said it had already been to the Labour Court on a number of occasions and believed the process had been exhausted.
