The giant head of John Santa arrived on the back of a truck at exactly 10:58 on Tuesday morning. It caught the attention of people milling about in front of 358 North Shore Drive on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. Conversations paused, the crowd looked up as the truck rolled closer, Santa’s 4-foot-tall head drawing nearer, its lips now moving. “This is personal for me and my family,” the head said. The people cheered.
The normal size, flesh-and-blood John Santa, standing in the crowd, smiled at the sight of himself, extra large and delivering a video message from a billboard truck. “My father was a union laborer and union steelworker,” video Santa said. “My grandfather worked for the union railroad.”
Santa is following a family tradition. He’s a union page designer and copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a newspaper from which he and about 30 of his Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh colleagues are on strike. His message, commemorating the strike’s two-year anniversary, was part of a four-minute video in which several strikers spoke of their reasons for walking off the job and their determination to see the action through to the end.
After a short rally in front of the Post-Gazette newsroom, the billboard truck roamed the Pittsburgh area, spreading its message of solidarity to neighborhoods on the North Shore, Oakland, the South Side, Squirrel Hill, Lawrenceville, even to Oakdale.
At one point the truck parked at an intersection in Shadyside, near the mansion of PG publisher John Block. While a road construction crew guided traffic past cones and dog walkers shuffled by, striker Rob Joesbury’s image appeared on the billboard screen, his voice carrying down the block, “I have been on strike for nearly two years,” he said. “It’s been probably the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, getting up in the morning and knowing you don’t have a job to go to but knowing that because you’re on strike, you’re fighting for something bigger than yourself. We just want the company to follow federal labor law.”
Joesbury offered a concise summation of the day’s message: The strike has gone on long enough, and those with the power to bring it to an end need to do so.
The strike stands now as the nation’s longest ongoing work dispute. Workers in four production unions went on strike on Oct. 6, 2022, over a dispute that left them without health care coverage. Journalists in the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh joined on their own unfair labor practices strike that Oct. 18.
The rally wasn’t a celebration — workers don’t celebrate 24 months of no paychecks. Instead, it provided an opportunity for the striking workers to deliver messages of defiance, determination and more than a little frustration. They’ve scored victories that should have brought the dispute to an end. Yet here they are, still on the picket line.
The strikers’ first big win came in late January 2023, when an administrative law judge ruled the company has been breaking federal labor law. The second victory came last month, when that ruling was affirmed by the five-member National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C.
The strike continues because the PG, with its vast resources, has appealed each decision. And the striking workers continue to struggle. Hence the day’s message, repeated over and over, from the billboard truck and by speakers at the rally: Those who control the Post-Gazette’s destiny should stop breaking federal labor law and end the strike.
Who are those people? Striker Natalie Duleba called some of them out by name:
- Publisher John Block. “He’s told us on more than one occasion that he can’t do anything,” she said. “The man who owns 25% of the parent company!”
- Emily Escalante, a member of the Block family, a board member and part owner of BCI, the PG’s parent company. “She has a voice, one she can use to shout as strongly and as often as she can, ‘This has to stop, this has to end, this is not good for our company, this is not good for our workers,’” Duleba said.
- Ron Davenport, BCI board member, appointed by John Block. “He currently owes his former employees at Sheraden Broadcasting hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Duleba said. “So obviously John Block and Ron Davenport are birds of a feather here, in terms of prioritizing profits over people.”
- Stan Wischnowski, PG executive editor, who Duleba maintained should say to Block, “This is wrong. I want my hard-working reporters who I know and respect, who this town respects, to be back in this office producing the content that this community deserves.”
Striker Bob Batz Jr., who’s been editing this proud worker-produced rag since the strike’s beginning, called out those at the PG who’ve been misleading the public about the status of the dispute.
“People call to subscribe, or they get called to subscribe, and someone on the phone says, ‘That’s all over, it’s been settled,’” he said to the crowd. “Does this look like it’s over?
The crowd hooted, “No!”
“We know that people apply for jobs at this paper, and they’re told by editors and other journalists that it’s over, the strike is over. Does this look like it’s over?”
Again, “No!”
Batz noted that failing to alert job applicants about a labor dispute is a violation of state law that could result in fines and/or jail time. He noted that the union is pursuing legal action.
All great strikes have a song, Batz concluded. Then he called up strike supporter Tom Breiding, a local folk/Americana artist and songwriter who specializes in labor songs. Breiding lead the gathering in singing a homemade version of the Woody Guthrie song, “Union Maid.” Breiding modified verses to call out the “Block boys” for their corporate greed as well as scab PG writers who lend their opinions to sports yak fests on a radio station called “The Fan” and local TV stations. Pittsburgh Labor Choir’s Tom Hoffman then led in a labor song that followed the day’s themes — including raises, health care and back pay.
Charles McCollester, a fixture in Western Pennsylvania’s labor movement for decades, recalled a seven-month strike at Westinghouse Air Brake, where he worked as a machinist. At the time, he and his wife were raising four children. Strike pay then amounted to $5 a week, he said. “I cleaned toilets at Mary Magdalene school during the entire strike,” he said. “I really appreciate what you’ve done.”
PG owners are hurting the region by refusing to settle and keeping experienced union journalists and editors away from their duties, said McCollester, a labor historian and author. “We need a newspaper. We need local reporting, accountability for the people who govern us.”
Striker Ed Blazina then stepped forward.
“People ask, ‘How do you go through two years on strike?’” he said. Then he pointed to McCollester. “That’s how. With help from folks like all of you here.”
Blazina, who covers transportation for the PG when he’s not on strike, and for the PUP during the strike, agreed that the newspaper needs the expertise of those now on the picket line.
“We know this city, we know how to cover it,” he said. Then, motioning to the PG newsroom, he added, “All they need to do is settle this madness. Let us get back to work. Give us a fair contract, and we’re here.”
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.