The Post-Gazette says it plans to close its Clinton printing plant

The company that publishes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette intends to close its Clinton printing plant and offices in Findlay.

The company’s director of operations, Rob Weber, recently sent a letter to all four unions representing PG workers who are currently on strike, saying, “Please be advised that the Company intends to notify the landlord of the Clinton facility on or about July 31, 2024, that it is giving early termination of the current Clinton facility lease. The company will have one (1) year after its termination of the lease to vacate the premises, remove the printing press and other equipment from the leased premises.

“We are prepared to discuss the effects the Company’s decision will have on your bargaining unit. Please let me know when you are available to meet.”

That letter was sent on May 23 to Zack Tanner, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents journalists. The notice also was sent to the unions representing the press workers and mailers who normally work at the Clinton plant, as well as the union representing the advertising workers, who normally work out of the PG’s North Shore newsroom with the journalists.

All those unions have been on strike for more than 20 months. The journalists went on strike on Oct. 18, 2022, over their own unfair labor practice issues. They joined the other production unions who went on strike that Oct. 6 over a dispute over their health care coverage. One union, the transportation workers represented by the Teamsters, secretly settled its strike with the paper and dissolved in April.

The Newspaper Guild is expecting a temporary injunction, called a 10(j) injunction, to be filed by the National Labor Relations Board, asking a judge in District Court to take the journalists back to work on the terms of their last contract, which expired in 2017, and to bargain in good faith for a new one. The Guild and other unions have filed additional unfair labor practices charges.

These “effects bargaining” sessions about the effects of closing of the plant will be a separate issue from the strike but involve the same workers. If the PG indeed stops printing its own papers, it will have no need for press workers or mailers. Journalists and advertising workers still would be needed for the digital products, but their work could be affected, as well.

The company hasn’t announced the news publicly. Workers who are on strike as well as those who continue to work at the company don’t know if the company’s notice means the PG will end its print editions, which it now produces on Thursdays and Sundays. During the strike, it has printed those newspapers at the Butler Eagle and could continue to do so there or at another facility. Or it even could set up its current or a new press in another location (not likely).

“Until we get with the company and they spell out to us what they plan to do, we don’t know,” said Tanner, who noted that closing the Clinton facility also would affect others who now work there, including a handful of machinist, engineer and electrical workers, as well as human resources staff.

The Post-Gazette newspaper had been printed at 34 Blvd. of the Allies, Downtown, which the PG shared with The Pittsburgh Press after entering a joint operating agreement in 1961. After the newspaper strike of 1992, the PG bought the other paper, those presses and the building.

The PG announced in February 2014 that it was moving the printing operation as well as financing and information technology offices from its Downtown building to the facility in Findlay, where it began printing newspapers, with some fanfare, that September.

Weber’s letter started out by outlining how the company announced its intention to go digital back in June 2018, and then eliminated two printed papers a week that August and two additional print days the next September and one more day in February 2021. Those changes led to effects bargaining sessions, as well. Customers and advertisers now can purchase a mix of print and digital content or just digital or print products.

Spokespeople for the PG as well as for co-owner Allan Block did not respond to Wednesday morning emails from the Union Progress seeking comment.

The eventuality of having no printed paper, and thus not needing press workers and mailers, has been brought up many times in bargaining sessions before and during the strike, but representatives of the company, including Weber and its lawyers, never committed to anything specific. There are eight press workers and 15 mailers (10 full-time and five part-time) who would no longer be needed if the company gives up printing its own newspapers.

“We’ve been sorta on the clock for a good while now,” said mailers union President John Clark, noting that previously discontinued print days were accomplished without laying off any mailers. He never expected to be their president, much less their last one. “To be the one who possibly turns the lights out is sad.”

Pressman’s union President Chris Lang knows both unions were open to negotiating their own demise in the past and was very frustrated that the company would not do so. But he declined to speculate on what would happen now, saying, “You don’t want to put the cart before the horse.”

The newspaper reported in September 2022 that the Buncher Co. was selling the building that houses PG operations in Findlay, but Allegheny County records show that Buncher still owns it. Only a relative few people have been working there. The striking unions still are regularly picketing outside.

Tanner says the four striking unions and their lawyer, Joe Pass, offered four June dates that they could meet with the company about vacating the printing plant, and the company has agreed to meet at least one of the unions on the morning of June 20 at a hotel near Pittsburgh International Airport. The two sides last met in March, but a Union Progress representative was not present.