For the first time since September 2023, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette met for a bargaining session with one of five unions that have been on strike at the company since October 2022.
In only a 20-minute meeting that started at about 2 p.m. Tuesday, the two sides cordially if crisply agreed to meet more substantively and for longer on March 5 and 6.
King & Ballow lawyer Richard Lowe, here from Nashville, Tennessee, and joined by PG’s Production Operations Director Rob Weber, represented the company. Representing Pittsburgh typographical union advertising workers was Communications Workers of America District 2-13 International Vice President Mike Davis, here from Philadelphia and joined by local CWA representative Jonathan Remington, who is now chairing the typos bargaining committee.
This was a new typos bargaining committee look at a new venue — a meeting room at the Hyatt Regency Pittsburgh International Airport hotel — but Remington said he would find and propose a new nearby and neutral location for the next meeting with easier access and free parking. (Previous sessions have been held at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown.)
Davis said he wants to review contract proposals made by both the typos and the company since their last contract expired in 2017 and identify issues on which the two sides tentatively agree.
Lowe countered that the typos union’s last proposal came in March 2017, “which is a little dated.” He pointed out that he last discussed “TAs” on the company’s February 2020 proposal in April of 2023 with then-typos local president Don McConnell, who is no longer with the union.
Davis said, “I’m looking to negotiate a contract” and vowed to “put everything we have across the table. … We’re just looking to get an agreement that’s fair for both parties.”
The two sides did not discuss the workers’ health care coverage, a dispute over which precipitated the strike by the typos and the three other production unions on Oct. 6, 2022. Members of the journalists’ union, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, went out on their own unfair labor practices strike on Oct. 18, 2022. That union’s president, Zack Tanner, also attended Tuesday’s bargaining session.
The mailers union has its own bargaining session scheduled for next month, and Tanner said the guild may set a bargaining date or two around that, depending on the company’s availability. The other workers on strike belong to the pressmen union and the Teamsters.
The strike is in its 17th month, which workers believe is now the longest-running strike in the U.S. and the longest strike ever in Pittsburgh.
In two bargaining sessions in June, the company and the unions appeared to be close to agreeing to a health care plan proposed by the four production unions, but the company said it would not sign a participation agreement that that plan would have required, and nothing happened, including when the two sides got back together in September.
The guild has said that health care coverage for the production workers is one of the conditions for resolving its strike. The guild’s positions — including that the company did not but must bargain in good faith and return to its 2017 contract terms in the meantime — were supported by a ruling by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge in January 2023, but about a month later the company appealed. There has been no apparent movement on that case.
Davis and Remington both were clear that they want to see some movement for the typos as well as the other unions, including on health care. Davis called for the company to tell the union if it wants the advertising workers back. “We still have members that we care about.”
“I’m just glad you guys have decided to sit down and get a contract,” said Lowe, noting, referring to Davis and Remington, “It might be easier with different people.”
Lowe and Weber and Davis and Remington exchanged business cards.
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.
