Paris  - The employees of France's most prestigious daily newspaper, Le Monde, voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to strike for the second time this week to protest planned job cuts, the daily reported on its web site.

The 24-hour strike is to begin Wednesday afternoon and will prevent the daily, which calls itself France's newspaper of record, from appearing on newsstands Thursday afternoon.

On Monday, Le Monde workers walked of their jobs for the second time in the newspaper's 64-year history to demand a renegotiation of the planned cuts of 129 jobs, 85 to
90 of them in the newsroom.

The cuts have been proposed by Le Monde's management to help reduce the paper's debts of about 150 million euros (240 million dollars) and to make it profitable again. In 2007, the Le Monde group lost 20 million euros.

Monday's job action was the first time that Le Monde employees actually struck against their own management. In 1976, employees stopped publication of the paper to support their colleagues at France Soir, which had been sold to a new owner. (dpa)