A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work

The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday filed for an injunction seeking to have a federal court step in to end an almost two-year strike and put striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers back to work.

The rare filing, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, asks a judge to order the company to follow federal labor law and take striking journalists back to work, at least temporarily, under the terms of their last illegally violated contract while their union and the company negotiate a new contract.

The filing also seeks to have the company reimburse other striking workers — in unions representing advertising workers, pressmen and mailers — for health care coverage the company was legally supposed to pay for but did not, as well as for subsequent health care costs. That significant financial remedy would get those workers to end their strike, return to work, and resume bargaining for a new health care plan and new contracts.

The next step: A District Court judge will consider the injunction request and issue a ruling, a process union officials say could take from a couple of weeks to several months.

Within days of a federal judge’s ruling fully in favor of this request for an injunction to stop “irreparable harm” to the workers while the legal process drags on, a total of about 60 strikers could be back to work.

The filing is the most significant development in the strike since an administrative law judge ruled in January 2023 that the PG is breaking federal labor law in multiple ways, including not bargaining in good faith with the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. 

The injunction supports the specifics of that administrative law judge’s ruling, which the company appealed, by asking a U.S. District judge to order the company to be “enjoined and restrained from”:

• Failing and refusing to bargain in good faith with all the unions over successor collective-bargaining agreements and any interim agreements over health insurance benefits.

• Making unilateral changes to the journalists’ last contract, which expired in 2017.

• In any other manner interfering with, restraining or coercing employees in the
exercise of the rights guaranteed them under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

The request also asks the judge to order the company to:

• Immediately bargain collectively and in good faith with the unions, upon their request, for contracts and health insurance benefits.

• Immediately rescind any or all of the unilateral changes that the company unlawfully implemented in July 2020 and “restore, honor and continue the terms” of the parties’ 2014-2017 collective-bargaining agreement. That would include the company making all prospective increased health care insurance payments required by the Western Pennsylvania Teamsters and Employers’ Welfare Fund, in accordance with the December 2019 arbitration award on this issue.

• Make whole the affected employees in the pressmen’s, typos’ and mailers’ unions
for any direct or foreseeable financial harms caused by the loss of health benefits, including prospective reimbursement for out-of-pocket medical and substitute
health insurance expenses, suffered as a result of the company’s unlawful bad-faith bargaining and unilateral changes.

• Within five days, post physical copies of the District Court’s injunction order setting forth the relief granted at the company’s Clinton and Pittsburgh facilities, as well as email and mail them to all employees.

• Within seven days of the issuance of the District Court’s injunction order, convene one or more mandatory meetings to read it to all employees.

• Within 21 days, submit to the District Court and the NLRB’s Regional Director Nancy Wilson a sworn affidavit stating in detail how the PG has complied with the injunction order.

The filing isn’t yet the end of a saga that’s been difficult to follow, even for those workers who have been living for nearly two years with what has become the longest strike ever in Pittsburgh and the longest ongoing strike in the country.

The production unions went on strike on Oct. 6, 2022, over a dispute over their health care coverage, for which the company stopped paying because of a dispute over a cost increase of $19 a week. The journalists of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh voted — 38 to 36 — to go on their own unfair labor practices strike on Oct. 18, 2022, and about 60 of its then 95 members did.

The Guild that fall had just presented its case before NLRB Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter. On Jan. 26, 2023, he ruled overwhelmingly for the journalists. But on March 23, 2023, the company, as expected, appealed that case, which continues to be pending before the five-member board in Washington. Other unfair labor practice charges and other unions’ cases vs. the PG also still are pending.

Meanwhile, the strikers have been getting by on weekly strike benefits from their unions and by applying for money available to them from donations from supporters, including the Communications Workers of America, the parent union of three of the locals. Through July 2024, according to the CWA, donations totaled more than $781,000.

In the journalists’ unfair labor practice case, Carter further ordered the company to “make its employees whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits that resulted from its unlawful unilateral changes” in 2020, such as reductions in salary and vacation. Union officials had estimated at one point that the company’s bill for all union and striker losses would be more than $4 million, but the NLRB’s request for an injunction doesn’t seem to address this directly.

Find the judge’s 2023 decision and more at https://www.nlrb.gov/case/06-CA-269346.

Wednesday’s filing in the Western District of Pennsylvania Court on Grant Street, Downtown, came more than three months after the striking workers expected the local NLRB to seek what’s called a 10(j) injunction. Such injunctions are rare — Only four have been authorized this year. The NLRB page about them notes, “These temporary injunctions are needed to protect the process of collective bargaining and employee rights under the [National Labor Relations] Act, and to ensure that Board decisions will be meaningful.”

In fact, union officials said, the local office was set to file the injunction this June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruling — in a case involving Starbucks workers — changed the standards that all such NLRB 10(j) injunction requests must meet. So over the past several weeks, the union officials said, the NLRB adjusted its 90-page brief and supporting documents for the news workers before filing it — something noted in the injunction request.

Other twists in the long road included one of the PG production union locals, the Teamsters representing transportation workers, in April secretly settling its strike by taking severance payments in exchange for dissolving their local, something the other unions consider a betrayal.

Then in June, the remaining four unions met with the company to hear its plans to close its printing facility in Findlay by August 2025 while going all in on its longtime business plan to deliver its news products digitally. The company wouldn’t need its own pressmen (eight of whom, including one woman, still are on strike with Printing Packaging & Production Workers Union or PPPWU), nor any mailers (CWA 1484 has 10 full-time employees on strike and five part-time employees on strike). But the company still will need advertising workers (nine of whom are still on strike with CWA 14827).

All this is occurring during a backdrop of lawsuits and feuding among members of the Block family that runs Block Communications Inc., which owns the PG, The Toledo Blade, and a cable company and several broadcast stations in Ohio. One point of contention is the board looking into the possibility of trying to sell the Pittsburgh newspaper, which has been created and published, online daily and in print two days a week, by workers who didn’t join the strike and workers who were hired after the strike started.

Through it all, many supporters — from longtime customers to U.S. senators — have avoided buying, reading or talking to the Post-Gazette so as not to cross the picket line and undermine the workers’ right to strike for better conditions for all workers at the company.

Union leaders stress that the Post-Gazette’s illegal behavior predates the strike by several years and that the company has spent millions more to fight the unions than it would have cost to treat them legally and fairly.

“With the money the Post-Gazette has spent on anti-union attorneys, private security firms, printing the paper at the Butler Eagle, which we estimate to be close to $12 million, they could have given every employee a raise and funded the health care instead of terminating it,” said PPPWU Local 24M/9N President Chris Lang in a news release. “This is the beginning of our eighth year in negotiations, and hopefully the 10(j) injunction will bring all of this nonsense to a close. The employees have given their lives to this company and deserve that respect.”

In terms of journalists, there are 27 strikers and about 75 who are working. Many of those have been hired since the strike began. Meanwhile, several strikers decided to take other jobs, sometimes in other cities. Only a handful of strikers went back to work at the PG. Per federal labor law, strikers who did not take similar jobs would be legally entitled to getting their former job titles back; the fate of replacement workers would be up to the company.

The majority of Newspaper Guild members who did not go on strike believe that they have resigned their union membership, but in fact they remain members of the bargaining unit, and it continues to be a condition of employment to be a member in good standing to retain their jobs. The Newspaper Guild executive committee recently voted to require those workers to catch up on all unpaid dues, dating back to 2021 in some cases, and may also levy fines some would be required to pay to return to good standing.

Zack Tanner, striking interactive designer and Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh president, said he’s happy for the workers to get their day in court. “It’s really exciting that this is coming down finally,” he said. “You can see from the size and scope of it how much the PG is breaking federal law.”

Marian Needham, executive vice president of the NewsGuild-CWA, said in a statement, “We are hopeful that the Blocks will not demonstrate the same contempt for the federal courts that they have shown their employees and this entire bargaining process. We are resolute in our intention to bargain a fair settlement for our members, and we will continue to fight until we get there.”

Should a District Court rule in the unions’ favor, the PG may request a stay from that same judge and possibly appeal to a U.S. Circuit court.

The company could comply with the administrative law judge’s 2023 order at any time, and it and the unions also could negotiate a settlement, or the outcome of the cases still could be decided by the five-member NLRB board in Washington or on appeals. There are no deadlines for that to happen.

The filing notes, “Unless injunctive relief is immediately obtained, it may fairly be anticipated that [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] will continue its unlawful conduct during the proceedings before the Board and during subsequent proceedings before a court of appeals for an enforcement decree with the result that PPG’s employees will continue to be deprived of their rights guaranteed in the [National Labor Relations] Act.”

The striking workers and unions plan to hold a news conference in response to the injunction request at 2 p.m. Thursday in front of the Post-Gazette’s newsroom at 358 North Shore Drive, Pittsburgh 15212.

The Union Progress’ Rob Joesbury contributed.

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