Judge Cathy Bissoon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on Thursday denied a temporary injunction for workers in three production unions that have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more than two years and four months.
The Region 6 office of the National Labor Relations Board last August had filed a petition for the injunction, which would have compelled the company to take the strikers back to work while negotiating a new contract in good faith as their case moved through the legal system.
In charges previously filed by those unions, NLRB administrative law judges had ruled that the PG bargained in bad faith with each of the three unions on new contracts but did not break the law in implementing a new health plan for those workers.
Bissoon’s ruling said the petitioner, NLRB Region 6 Director Nancy Wilson, “has not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits,” per legal precedent set by the recent (2024) Starbucks Corp. vs. McKinney ruling.
So for now, the production workers’ strike continues, pending final disposition before the board on the unfair labor practice charges.
Also continuing is the strike by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents journalists at the PG. Their case is further along, in that this past September, the NLRB in Washington, D.C., affirmed an administrative law judge’s ruling saying that the PG negotiated in bad faith. The company appealed, and the NLRB is pursuing both an injunction and an enforcement of its ruling in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
If that court grants that injunction, the company would be compelled to take the journalists back to work under the terms of their last contract and to bargain in good faith with the union on a new contract while the same court considers the NLRB’s petition to enforce its rulings for the guild.
Thursday’s ruling in Pittsburgh — following three days of hearings at the Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse, Downtown — affects workers in the typographical (advertising), pressmen’s and mailers’ unions at the PG — a total of 31 full- and part-time workers who went on strike on Oct. 6, 2022, over a dispute over their health care insurance.
Journalists of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh went on their own unfair labor practices strike that Oct. 18. Their case was separated from the other workers’ months ago. The Guild’s parent union as well as the typos’ and the mailers’ unions’ is the Communications Workers of America.
In his weekly emailed newsletter Friday, international NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss called the ruling “disappointing.” He also noted, “We’re still on strike. We’ve maintained our picket lines and held solidarity for 862 days. Tomorrow will be 863 days on strike.”
This story will be updated.
The PUP is the publication of the striking workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
