The strike daily Dec. 5: Striking Post-Gazette workers move into ‘strike HQ,’ unveil redesigned PUP website

Striking workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did some moving on Monday.

But instead of moving up and down the picket line, striking workers moved into “strike headquarters,” an office space for coordinating their actions and activities.

Thanks to the generosity of the United Steelworkers, striking PG workers have been given access — free of charge — to a second-floor office in the USW Building in Downtown Pittsburgh.

“This strike has surfaced intense solidarity from union colleagues all across the country, but I can’t go on enough about the support from the Steelworkers,” said Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Zack Tanner. “Our agitating, organizing, bargaining and journalism has a home now thanks to these comrades in arms.”

As striking workers arrived at the office for the first time throughout Monday, they similarly expressed gratitude for USW’s solidarity and complimented the space.

The strike headquarters quickly played host to several meetings of striking workers, including a morning general meeting and multiple small-group discussions.

The office space is also being used as the de facto newsroom for the Pittsburgh Union Progress.

Prior to the striking PG workers moving into the space, the offices were used by Working America, an AFL-CIO group involved in political action and get-out-the-vote movements. When Working America left the space, the group left lots of pro-labor and pro-union art on the walls — art that fits in nicely with the cause of the striking PG workers.

Also Monday, the Union Progress unveiled a revamped version of unionprogress.com.

The redesign was led by one of PUP’s co-editors, Jon Moss.

“We had a great first version of the website that was able to get us off the ground and running. … We thought it was time, around Thanksgiving, to give it a refresh for our loyal readers,” said Moss, a copy editor and news reporter at the PG.

Moss and other PUP editors examined different design options, made suggestions and tweaks, and launched a test version of the site around Thanksgiving before making final changes prior to Monday morning’s update.

Striking PG workers also finished their planning Monday for their third negotiation session with the company since the strikes began in October. The third session is scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh, which also hosted the first two sessions in November.

Those two sessions yielded no progress, as PG representatives rebuffed attempts to bargain in good faith and continued to offer the same contract that the unions declined in 2020.

Newsroom workers at the PG have been on strike since Oct. 18, while distribution, production and advertising workers walked off the job in the early-morning hours of Oct. 6.