The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists’ strike continues

Workers in three news production and advertising unions that have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for two years and five months over a dispute about their health care coverage have voted to accept settlements that end their strike, their jobs and their union locals or unit.

Theirs is the longest-running strike in the country, and it still is ongoing, as their union siblings in the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are continuing to strike for their legal rights.

But it’s over for the production and advertising workers. They are members of the typographical (advertising) union and the mailers union — both locals of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) — as well as the pressmen’s union unit. There are 31 workers who are losing their jobs as well as their unions or unit, as their buyouts stipulate that the locals/unit drop all pending unfair labor practice charges and then dissolve.

“I don’t think bittersweet is the right word,” said Jonathan Remington, staff representative for CWA District 2-13, whose job is organizing unions, not “closing the book” on them. “It’s agonizing.”

He helped negotiate the settlements, on which the typos met by Zoom Monday evening — voting unanimously to accept the buyouts. Later Monday the mailers met in person and also unanimously approved the buyouts. The meetings were open only to members of each local. The pressmen followed suit on Wednesday evening.

Remington, who returned his locals’ paperwork to the company around 1 p.m. on Thursday, said that workers each will receive 26 weeks of pay. Some of the nine typos also will receive some additional money based on past commission averages. Sixteen mailers also will receive certain differentials based on their shifts and skills, thanks to negotiations with the company over the past several months.

The pressmen’s president, Chris Lang, couldn’t be reached, but other union leaders said the pressmen’s unit’s collective bargaining agreement included language that helped them get some additional money that they could use for health care. (March 23 update: Lang emailed the Union Progress to say “our PPPWU Local 24M/9N still represents 13 shops in the area, we have not closed operations …”)  

Joe Pass, the attorney for all three unions as well as the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, did not return requests for comment on Thursday. Spokespeople for the Post-Gazette and John and Allan Block of its parent company Block Communications Inc. also did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

“We tried to get health care — at least some kind of health care — but we were unsuccessful,” said Remington. He noted that the production workers’ expired contracts had no provisions for severance.

“The company wasn’t obligated to give them anything,” he said. So the buyouts, while “modest,” still have value to the workers as “some sort of dignity,” he said. “An opportunity to move on with their lives.”

It’s the death of this mailers union, as the PG workers were the last members of what’s now CWA Local 14842, which has decades of history. “Some are third-generation PG employees,” said Remington. “I’m not going to say I cried at the meeting, but it was like a love-in.”

The remaining typos in CWA Local 14827 are the last members of that local of what was Pittsburgh Typographical Union No. 7, which is, according to the University of Pittsburgh, the oldest continually existing labor union in Pittsburgh, with roots dating back to 1836. The union was one of the 14 founding locals of the International Typographical Union in 1852. Remington says it still has about 100 active members across Pennsylvania.

He expected the CWA workers to wait until the company sends them their paperwork and payments — in at least a week — to speak about the end of the strike.

But he did share a statement from one of the typos, account representative Kitsy Higgins, who became well known in Western Pennsylvania and beyond as one of the voices and faces of the Pittsburgh news strikers.

“We are obviously disappointed by this outcome,” she wrote. “I feel extremely proud of my fellow employees who had the courage to go and stay on strike. Happy to say that we did what was in our power to fight for workers rights. We cannot thank the supporters enough who helped us over the last few years.”

On Feb. 13, U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Bissoon denied the National Labor Relations Board’s petition for an injunction that would temporarily get these production workers back to work and back to the bargaining table while their case worked its way through the courts and the NLRB process.

The workers still could have continued to strike and have their unfair labor practice charges eventually heard by the NLRB in Washington, D.C. But the Trump administration’s Jan. 27 firing of board member Gwynne Wilcox left the board with just two members — one Republican and one Democrat and without the quorum it needs to act. (The Trump administration also fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and then acting General Counsel Jessica Rutter.)

The twice-Senate-confirmed Wilcox filed suit and was reinstated on March 6 by a federal judge who ruled her firing without cause was illegal. But especially if the two other remaining open positions are filled now, under newly reappointed chair Marvin E. Kaplan, the board still is expected to be more business friendly than worker friendly.

And the NLRB process takes time these Pittsburgh workers don’t have. The company no longer needs its own press operators or mailers, who assemble newspapers and inserts. During the strike, PG has been having its only paper editions, on Thursdays and Sundays, printed at the Butler Eagle. In June, the company informed all the striking unions that it is closing its Clinton printing plant in Findlay by this August, and it recently sold its press and inserting equipment there to the Houston Chronicle for a price it did not disclose.

Remington said the fact that the mailers and pressmen have nowhere to work and Judge Bissoon’s very strong denial of an injunction led to the decision to not prolong the strike and to negotiate the best settlements possible for the workers. “Those folks are realistic. They know they don’t have a job to go back to,” he said, adding, “It was time to move on.”

The PG still does and will employ advertising workers, but they won’t be these who went on strike, and they won’t be unionized, at least not for a while.

NLRB administrative law judges previously ruled that the PG bargained in bad faith with each of the three production unions on new contracts but did not break the law in implementing a new health plan for those workers. A dispute over who would pay for an increase in the workers’ health care coverage (of $19 a week) is what precipitated their strike on Oct. 6, 2022.

The journalists went on their own unfair labor practices strike on Oct. 18, 2022. Their NewsGuild-CWA Local 38061 voted 38 to 36 to strike, and about 60 of its then 95 members did. Others continued to work at the PG, which also hired additional workers so it could continue to publish. Meanwhile, as happened with the production workers, some striking journalists resigned and took other jobs. Twenty-seven Guild members remain on strike, with the same main demands as when their strike started: for the company to restore the terms of their last contract, which expired in 2017, and bargain in good faith a new one. They also had demanded dignified health care for their union siblings.

Unlike the pressmen and the mailers, the journalists have work and jobs they can return to at the Post-Gazette newsroom.

In April 2024, workers in another one of the production unions, the Teamsters who transported print newspapers, settled with the company by accepting a buyout and dissolving their local — without telling the other unions. Since then, the company had been talking with the other production unions about settling, but those unions stuck together and opted to wait for the administrative law judges’ rulings in their unfair labor practice charges and for a ruling on the injunction. (The journalists were later removed from that request of an injunction and put into their own injunction filing by the NLRB.)

For much of the strike, the production workers maintained a picket line outside the Clinton plant — complete with a shelter and burn barrel for warmth — and the typos regularly picketed at the PG’s North Shore newsroom. Those actions earned the respect of the striking journalists. Even after the Teamsters abandoned the strike, the other workers maintained it and their solidarity for nearly two and a half years, with strong support, financial and otherwise, from other unions, workers, groups and people across Pittsburgh and beyond.

Several journalists expressed sadness at learning in mid-February that their fellow union members were facing not only losing their jobs but also dissolving their locals or unit. Said Joe Knupsky, “This is a black day.”

The Guild members know that, like themselves, many of those workers have taken on at least part-time jobs and side hustles. As Remington puts it, when a strike lasts this long, “It becomes an issue of staying alive …”

Now the journalists are alone in continuing this 889-days-total-and-counting strike. They’re hoping to get some resolution soon, but they also know that contrary to a much-chanted labor slogan, when you fight, you don’t always win everything you seek.

Previously, Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the journalists, whose bad-faith-bargaining case was affirmed by the NLRB in Washington, D.C., this past September, before the Trump administration’s changes effectively shut it down. That is, the board ruled for the journalists and against the company for it ripping up their contract, bad-faith bargaining and surveilling them.

But the company appealed, and so while the case moves through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, the NLRB is seeking an injunction for the journalists from that court. Such an injunction would compel the company to take the journalists back to work under their last contract while bargaining in good faith a new one. The same Third Circuit Court would hear and rule on the NLRB’s petition to enforce the board’s decision for the journalists.

A panel of three Third Circuit Court judges heard about 50 minutes of oral arguments on that injunction on Feb. 26 at the Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse, Downtown, and said they would take the matter under advisement. So the journalists are on strike at least until a ruling on the injunction and/or the larger case of the company’s appeal. The NLRB’s brief for that is due in Third Circuit Court by Monday, March 17.

The journalists vowed to keep fighting in a post-hearing email blast to supporters that included the line “We are hopeful of a favorable decision.” Meanwhile, they and their leaders and supporters are continuing to organize and take actions, take care of each other on strike and plan for a triumphant return to work.

In a press release from the CWA, CWA District 2-13 Vice President Mike Davis stated that “CWA remains on strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and united across our union in defense of our striking members in the newsroom.”

Remington said the production workers, too, “100% stand behind the NewsGuild [strikers] and will continue to support them.”

Striking journalist John Santa says in the news release that that feeling remains mutual toward the production workers. “My hope is that they receive the best deal possible for themselves and their families and are able to move on after being treated so unfairly by the company for such a long time.”

CORRECTION: This story originally reported that the pressmen’s union local was dissolving, but it’s just the Post-Gazette unit of that local, which otherwise continues to represent other units, according to President Chris Lang.