Trinity Mirror staff are bracing themselves for a round of possible job cuts as the company prepares for a tough year of trading.

Staff across the group, which includes regional and national newspapers around the UK, were given the news yesterday.

It follows an uncertain time for many workers after ongoing initiatives to reduce costs in the past two years.

But because of the state of the economy as it relates to newspapers, the company has now decided to take further steps to protect its position, and to review measures which will help it postpone incurring costs – or reduce existing ones.

The National Union of Journalists has hit out at the plan to consider job losses as part of the strategy.

It has not ruled out the possibility of industrial action in protest.

General secretary Jeremy Dear called the threatened job cuts an ‘obscene and short-term reaction’ to economic fears at a time when profits exceed £250m.

There is already a freeze on recruitment and the company has moved to cut discretionary spending on things like Christmas parties.

Jeremy said: "The initial reaction is one of huge anger at the fact that those journalists who continue to work long hours and with such dedication and commitment may be asked to work even harder to produce quality papers if their colleagues are sacrificed in the interests of shareholders.

"Trinity Mirror need to rethink their strategy and invest in their titles to win new readers not consider cuts which can only damage the editorial quality of the titles and cause more readers to abandon their titles.

"Not content with cancelling Christmas parties they are now creating a climate of fear and uncertainty throughout the company.

"The short-term interests of shareholders are being put before the long-term interests of the papers."

Union reps from across the Trinity Mirror group were called to meetings at lunchtime yesterday to be told that as a result of a "challenging" trading environment and fears of a downturn in the property market the company was carrying out a review of costs.

Although vacancies had already been left unfilled it was "likely further steps will be necessary including the possible reduction in the number of our employees".

A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: "All media owners are currently experiencing tough trading conditions due to the slowdown in advertising markets.

"We are reviewing a number of possible actions to support our businesses, which may include redundancies, in what is a challenging period for the entire media industry.

"We are currently in consultation with our employees and their representatives and it is too early to give an indication of the likely outcome of this review."