Journalist Helen Fallon has now lived through two strikes, but she’s still all in

I never imagined my journalistic career would be bookended by strikes.

It’s a sad personal truth, especially after 2023’s labor successes across the country that continue into this year. As a member of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America Local 38061, I am part of a 21-month unfair labor practice strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that has reached two horrible milestones — the longest continuous strike in the United States and the longest strike ever in Pittsburgh.

Forty-four years ago my first newspaper strike concluded after a 14-month struggle for livable wages and health care. My current strike focuses on those two issues again.

In January 2023 a ruling by an administrative law judge appointed by the National Labor Relations Board decreed that our newspaper didn’t negotiate in good faith with our union, illegally imposed working conditions and unlawfully surveilled workers engaged in union activities. The administrative law judge ordered the company to rescind the unilateral working conditions it had imposed in 2020 and restore the union’s previous contract, which expired in 2017. We thought an end was in sight.

Block Communications Inc., the private family-owned company that owns the PG, appealed the ruling.

What has happened since? Finally in April, 16 months after the ruling, the National Labor Relations Board authorized the regional NLRB office to seek an injunction in the guild’s and three other PG striking unions’ case against the newspaper for dozens of ongoing unfair labor practice violations of federal law.

It’s now August. We are still waiting for a hearing.

Back to my story: I started out as most young journalists did in the 1970s, working at small media outlets then moving on to larger ones. I loved my work as a reporter at the Valley Independent in Monessen, Pennsylvania, making more money than at my prior newspaper but not enough for 1979. I joined a newsroom that had struck Thomson Newspapers, a Canadian-based media behemoth, in 1970 to obtain Newspaper Guild representation for better pay and benefits. What the company would not do after that contract is apply increases to the salary scale, meaning young people came and went quickly, and veterans would not earn what they deserved. Health care coverage left a lot to be desired. So the second strike began.

The company brought in replacement workers from throughout its empire. We fought back with our own weekly paper, Valley Views. The sad truth? I made nearly as much money with strike benefits and my share of the strike paper’s profits and had better health care coverage. The Valley Independent’s circulation tanked, and its advertising plummeted.

The Monessen strike ended through federal mediation, a painfully slow process and one that BCI rejected in our PG strike after a few negotiation sessions. I took notes at the 1979-80 bargaining sessions and endured hearing our publisher denigrate our work and tell us we all could just leave; others would take our places. In fact, one scab attended the same college as I did. Later Thomson rewarded him with a management position at a small Ohio newspaper.

I was 26 then, and being on strike petrified me. But I stayed. I covered assignments that elevated my career. I learned about courage and standing up for what is right and fair.

That strike labeled me as a union rabble-rouser, though, and it became difficult to move on to another regional paper after it ended and we returned to work. I made my way into the PG newsroom in 1987 when I started teaching journalism at then Point Park College through a program for professors. I stayed on as a part-time copy editor, and I made more in one day than my Monessen weekly $150 paycheck, thanks to the guild. I still have that PG dues check-off form.

My career has been enriched since. I always had new, relevant journalistic experiences for my classes. I worked beside many of my students who joined our staff. I celebrated with journalists whose work has been recognized widely, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for coverage of the terrible Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

I actually paid Newspaper Guild dues twice as my union also represents Point Park faculty. That first contract in 2017 followed a long struggle, too. But after years of low wages, I finally had salary parity there.

The Block family, which has owned the PG since 1927, has changed. I was in the newsroom in 1992 when our revered publisher, the late William Block Sr., announced the PG — the weaker partner in a joint operating agreement with The Pittsburgh Press — had purchased the other paper following a successful Teamsters strike. It seemed both fitting and a miracle.

Over the decades since, the unions agreed to concessions to keep the PG a strong regional newspaper. Our unions sacrificed to make up millions of dollars in shortfalls. As pressures mounted with readership changes and economic downturns, the unions agreed to buyouts, pension changes, wage and benefit reductions, and adjustments in working conditions. After the last contract in 2014, Allan Block, then BCI managing director, thanked the unions “for supporting contract modifications that will financially strengthen the Post-Gazette.” 

The unions did this because the Blocks treated their employees well. I know. When my husband died suddenly almost 17 years ago, the paper paid me for weeks until I could return. It was a tremendous help, and my loyalty has not waned until now. As Joe Pass, the attorney who represented our Monessen newsroom in 1979-80 and represents us now, has told me, the Blocks in charge now mirror Thomson management. The end goal: Break the unions.

We had no choice but to strike against BCI. In addition to its other newspaper, The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, BCI includes cable TV systems, a communication services company and broadcast television stations, all developed with PG profits. It gained $13.25 million when the Downtown PG building was sold to DiCicco Development Inc. in 2019. We were told that money belonged only to BCI and wouldn’t benefit the PG.

Now to make this strike more complicated, the Blocks are fighting each other in court and possibly changing its future. We’ve learned through lawsuit briefs and published stories that in May, Allan Block, twin brother of PG publisher John Robinson Block, was ousted as CEO and chairman of the board, and his cousin Karen Block Johnese was elected to succeed him as chair of BCI. A strategic exploratory committee has been formed to determine BCI’s future, including the possibility of selling all its assets. All four unions have also received word that BCI will not renew its lease for the building in Findlay that houses its press and will move out of it next year.

It confounds those of us who knew and worked closely at the PG with other members of the Block family who are members of the BCI board that millions of dollars have been spent on litigation and so many other costs, prolonging this strike. Why not put money and effort now toward just resolving it? Then — as we did before — work with us to right the paper’s standing in the community and provide important journalistic work now and in the future.

At 71, I could walk away. But I can’t. I owe it to my colleagues who had the courage to take a stand in October 2022.

Strikes are painful and stressful, especially for my colleagues with families. They can be downright cruel. What perplexes us is the lack of media coverage for this historic action. We feel abandoned by our peers, including outlets right here in Pittsburgh.

It helps me that I report and write for the Pittsburgh Union Progress, this online news site. It pains me how many of my former colleagues, including some of my former students, have crossed our picket line and forgotten how much they owe the guild. In my first strike, my editors often came out to chat with me and others, often giving us kudos for our strike paper work. This one? I have had one or two texts with my boss, whom I have worked beside for years with great camaraderie, and that’s been it for nearly two years.

I will be here until this strike ends. I know it will. I know that again I will be on the right side of Pittsburgh labor history.

Helen Fallon has worked as a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette copy editor since 1987 and is a Point Park University professor emerita of journalism and its former Honors Program director. She is on the boards of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Foundation.