When Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh-represented journalists went on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Oct. 18, 2022, the union published its demands to end the strike.
Almost a year later those demands remain unchanged.
One is that the company meet the health care demands of the four production unions that went on strike over a disagreement over health care coverage on Oct. 6, 2022, 12 days before the journalists did.
The other three demands:
• End the illegally declared impasse to guild contract negotiations, which the company used as an excuse to impose work conditions in 2020.
• Undo the unilaterally imposed working conditions and reinstate the terms of the guild’s 2014-17 newsroom contract.
• Return to the bargaining table to reach a fair contract with the journalists represented by the guild.
The union’s president, Zack Tanner, said, “Our demands have been the same this entire time” and “are pretty easy asks. The fact that the company hasn’t met any of them is pretty abhorrent.”
Most of the guild’s demands were supported by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge’s ruling in January that said the company had broken federal labor law by not negotiating in good faith and must rescind the illegally imposed 2020 conditions, restore the terms of the last (2014-17) contract and return to bargaining a new contract. The company, however, appealed that ruling.
In the meantime, the guild and the company have made no progress in bargaining sessions held during the strike, nor have the production unions and the company come to any deal on those unions’ health care coverage, which, as Tanner points out, is a factor in the guild’s strike, as well. The imposed conditions forced the journalists onto the company plan.
The guild has made some proposals on contract issues and health care, but, “The company hasn’t moved once on anything,” Tanner said.
At the time of the NLRB judge’s ruling, Tanner said the labor action, then involving more than 100 Post-Gazette workers, is “the leverage the unions need to get the ruling enforced.” That’s not something that the NLRB has the power to do, but rather, the appellate courts do, noted the unions’ attorney Joe Pass.
In the meantime, Pass said, the production unions’ proposal in June for a better and less costly health care plan than the company’s plan is still hung up over the company’s refusal to sign a participation agreement and looks to be going nowhere. Of the company and how much it must be spending on its lawyers, Pass said, “They’re just trying to spend everyone into oblivion.”
Tanner doesn’t think it should be this hard. “We’re just asking the company to follow the law and follow our contract.”
The chairman and CEO of the PG’s parent company, Block Communications Inc., Allan Block, has never returned a Union Progress call for comment on whether he or the company want to resolve the strike and if so, how. He hasn’t weighed in publicly on the strike since it began, save for the time in November 2022 when a NewsGuild worker asked him about it at an Ohio Turnpike plaza and Block struck him with a bag of Wendy’s food.
Post-Gazette spokesperson Allison Latcheran did not return an email request for someone, anyone, to comment.
Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.
