As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom strike entered its sixth week, a video circulated widely online Monday showing one of the paper’s co-owners, Allan Block, swearing at a union organizer before striking him with a bag of fast food.
In the video, Block is asked about the strike; he responds by snapping, “Fuck you!” and lashing out at the cellphone camera with the Wendy’s bag in his hand.
The video was recorded by Nolan Rosenkrans, an organizer with the NewsGuild of New York who has been assisting the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh during the strike.
Rosenkrans said he was driving home to Toledo, Ohio, from Pittsburgh on Sunday when he had a chance encounter with Block and his wife, Susan Allan Block, at a rest stop and decided to ask them about the strike.
Rosenkrans is also the former president of the Toledo NewsGuild, which represents workers at the Blade of Toledo. (The Blade and the PG are both owned by Block Communications Inc., of which Allan Block is chairman and CEO.)
As the video continues, Rosenkrans follows the Blocks out to the parking lot, asking them about the strike.
At one point, Susan Allan Block claims PG workers were not kicked off their health insurance plans. But striking workers were removed from the company’s plan, and the PG’s distribution, production and advertising workers have been on strike since Oct. 6 after the company terminated their health insurance coverage.
She also declares that workers “should get other jobs if they’re not happy.”
By Monday evening, videos of the incident had racked up more than 65,000 combined views on Twitter and more than 100,000 on TikTok.
Meanwhile, on the picket line outside the PG’s North Shore newsroom, striking workers powered through another chilly late autumn day.
They enjoyed lunch from both Jimmy John’s and β in a touch of irony β Wendy’s while holding the line for the 35th day of the Newspaper Guild strike.
Striking workers are also preparing for their third round of contract negotiations since the strike began. Those talks are scheduled for Dec. 6. The first two sessions were stifled by continued bad-faith bargaining by the PG, the guild said.
Alex is a digital news editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike.
