HONOLULU -- Employees of Hawaii's largest newspaper voted Sunday night to authorize a strike after contract negotiations came down to a "final offer" by the company.

KITV'S Jill Kuramoto reported that members of the six trade unions that represent about 600 workers at The Honolulu Advertiser voted overwhelming to grant strike authority.

The message workers said they are sending is that they're not going to accept the company's proposal.

"I think their final offer is an insult to the workers who really have been doing their best to make the Advertiser a strong and viable property," sales representative Lucy Witeck said.

Employees of The Honolulu Advertiser gathered Sunday afternoon to have their voices heard over what the company is calling their "final offer."

The 21-month contract includes a 1 percent pay increase and a one-time 1.5 percent bonus. But the proposal also calls for substantially higher health care costs for employees.

"For me and several others, the contract proposal is actually going to cost me about $150 a month in real dollars, and that's not right," Advertiser staff writer Dan Nakaso said.

The last contract expired in June of last year, but it continues on an extension agreement.

The issues the Advertiser is fighting over is what many newspapers across the country are dealing with as competition in the news industry grows tighter and budgets are shrinking.

But Advertiser employees argued that their newspaper is doing well.

"Their Web site is one of the best in the entire Gannett chain. And that's the work that's been done by the employees here. By the professionals that work at the paper," The Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley said. "We think the way you reward that kind of work is to give wage increases, not pay cuts."

The unions said that the next step is preparing their members for a strike.

"There's a lot of work to put on a strike. Of course we'd rather put that energy into getting contracts with the company, and we hope this means they'll come back to the bargaining table," Hawaii Newspaper Guild Administration Officer Wayne Cahill said.

The last time the Advertiser went on strike was in 1963, which was the very early days of the joint operating agreement.

During the strike, both the Advertiser and Honolulu Star Bulletin employees picketed for 53 days to get a fair contract.