The bargaining committee representing striking members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and its lawyer met with a lawyer and a manager of the journalists’ employer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for a rare bargaining session on Wednesday afternoon at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown.
No progress appears to have been made, from the session’s start just after 1 p.m. to the end just before 3 p.m. The last bargaining session with the journalists in April 2023 also accomplished little.
Richard Lowe, attorney for the PG, wanted the journalists to sign off as agreeing, paragraph by paragraph, on at least parts of the company’s proposal, which he said was unchanged from November 2022.
The 16 guild negotiators gave Lowe a full copy of a document they created after that last bargaining session. That document compares the company proposal, the union’s last full proposal (from September 2019), and the last contract, which expired in 2017. The guild maintained that it had given the company that document in June 2023. Lowe and the PG’s director of operations, Rob Weber, said they only had the first page.
A guild committee member then handed Lowe the full document, and committee members told him to review it to be sure both sides were clear on each other’s proposals and how they agree, “apples to apples.” The two sides can then talk more productively at their next bargaining session, they said. That next session was not scheduled.
Guild lawyer Joe Pass opened the session by stating, “We would like to examine your books. That might help everybody get something done.” Lowe said he would respond to that request later.
Committee members then took turns asking Lowe if the company is taking actions ordered by the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20 — namely, take the journalists back to work under the terms of their last contract and negotiate in good faith for a new one.
The five-member board affirmed the January 2023 ruling of its administrative law judge and expanded the remedy it seeks to include “compensating the union for all bargaining expenses incurred while the employer engaged in bad-faith bargaining through Sept. 8, 2020; compensate employee negotiators for lost earnings while attending bargaining sessions; make employees whole for the unlawful unilateral changes to their terms and conditions of employment; and make delinquent contribution to applicable benefit funds.”
But the company appealed. That case, Post-Gazette vs. the NLRB, is filed but not scheduled in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, as Lowe repeated several times. “Again, we don’t believe we have violated any Labor Act provisions,” he said.
Meanwhile, the NLRB’s request for a 10(j) injunction for workers in three other striking Post-Gazette unions — advertising, press workers and mailers — is to be continued in early December in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Downtown. That hearing started on Oct. 28, then was to continue on Nov. 20 (per the NLRB’s request), but now looks to continue in early December (per the PG’s request). Attorneys for the NLRB’s Region 6 office in Pittsburgh and for the PG joined in a status phone call with Judge Cathy Bissoon on Friday.
If the NLRB is successful in getting the judge to rule for such an injunction, those production workers — who went on strike on Oct. 6, 2022, in a dispute over health care coverage — can go back to work with health care coverage while they continue to bargain contracts and their court cases continue.
The journalists, who joined those workers on their own unfair labor practices strike on Oct. 18, 2023, are not now part of that 10(j) request.
The striking unions and company representatives last officially met for contract bargaining in February, with the typos’ committee, and, without the Union Progress present, in March, except for an “effects bargaining” session in June at which the company officially told the unions that it is closing its Clinton printing plant in Findlay. (It has not been printing its Thursday and Sunday papers there during the strike, but rather in Butler.) Weber at that time also said that the lease on the PG’s North Shore newsroom is expiring at the end of 2025 and the company could move that to a new address.
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.
