Control over work life is focus of strike hearing that is anything but ‘lickety-split’

After more than three hours of testimony in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh Tuesday, the judge called an end to the proceeding. As is customary, everyone stood while she walked out. Members of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mailers union, whose immediate fate depends on what the judge makes of all the testimony and paperwork submitted during the past several weeks, stretched their backs and sighed.

“Still in limbo,” one said.

The mailers are one of four unions who have been on strike at the Post-Gazette since October 2022. To give you some context: Two days after the strike began, Ukrainian security forces blasted a big hole in the Crimean Bridge. You may remember the dramatic video of the flames and black smoke. Three of the bridge’s four spans collapsed into the water below. Well, that bridge has since been repaired and reopened. The strike remains.

Strikers who wonder why a resolution has taken so long needed only to sit through Tuesday’s session at the Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse, Downtown. U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon heard testimony concerning an injunction that would get employees from three of the four striking unions back to work under the terms that prevailed prior to the strike. It would also order the PG to bargain a new agreement in good faith.

Those unions cover the PG’s mailers, press operators and advertising employees. Newsroom employees on strike won their case before the National Labor Relations Board in September 2024 and would not be covered by this injunction.

Things got started a little after 11 a.m. Tuesday with NLRB attorney Anne Tewksbury continuing her questioning of PG attorney Richard Lowe — a process that began during the last hearing on Jan. 8. Tewksbury told Lowe she was going to ask a series of questions that required only “yes” or “no” answers. Strikers in the courtroom anticipated a brisk testimony.

An hour and a half later, Lowe was answering one of Tewksbury’s questions with a lengthy explanation of why the PG desired total control over which employees would lose their jobs in the event of layoffs. Briskness had taken a beating. Bissoon called for a lunch break.

Lowe had earlier insisted the company needed control over nearly every aspect of employee work life, including disciplinary measures, outsourcing of work, employee health care and hours of work. All of these were once covered by contracts and not subject to arbitrary decisions by managers and bosses, but that would all change under the PG’s proposals. Managers insist they need flexibility in a challenging business environment; strikers see this as an excuse for a blatant power grab that would leave employees at the mercy of managers.

Tewksbury asked about employees’ options if they believed they were being punished arbitrarily or because a manager simply didn’t like them.

“If an employee was terminated for being late once and had a good record, the check on that would be arbitration,” Lowe said. An arbitrator would have the employee back to work “lickety-split,” he added.

This left strikers scrambling for a definition of “lickety-split,” since it usually takes more than a year for an arbitration to be heard and a decision rendered. Arbitration is problematic for other reasons: There’s no guarantee that a fired employee’s grievance will be arbitrated, and the PG’s proposals would place severe limitations on arbitrators.

Striking mailers, ad workers and pressmen will remain in limbo a bit longer. Bissoon gave the two sides a Feb. 3 deadline to submit final paperwork. She’ll make her decision some time after that.