The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday asked for a stay of a federal court’s order that the company restore journalists’ health care coverage, pending an additional appeal it said it will make — for a rehearing of a recent related ruling in the journalists’ favor by the same court in the long-running Pittsburgh news strike.
On Nov. 10, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Judge Cindy Chung, writing for a panel of three judges, clarified their March 24 injunction ordering the PG to restore the health care plan that the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh journalists had before the company implemented its own terms in 2020.
The company had asked the court to review that injunction (denied), and the National Labor Relations Board and the union had asked the court to hold the company in contempt for not following it (also denied). But Judge Chung spelled out what the company still must do — “specifically, reversion to health insurance coverage and pricing as set forth in Exhibit B to the 2014–2017 Agreement Between Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh” — that is, the most recent contract.
Also on Nov. 10, the three judges unanimously ruled that the company did break federal labor law in several ways. That ruling granted an application for enforcement of the National Labor Relations Board ruling for the strikers in September 2024, which had upheld an NLRB administrative law judge’s ruling in January 2023, that the PG had unlawfully declared an impasse and implemented those work terms, as well as unlawfully bargained in bad faith with the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh on a successor contract.
The company had appealed both of those NLRB decisions. The Third Circuit court’s Nov. 10 ruling affirmed the NLRB’s stance that the company must implement the terms of the previous contract, including the health care plan, while bargaining in good faith for a new one.
The company quickly announced it would again appeal, and so here it is:
The company filed this new motion Wednesday evening for a stay on the health care injunction until the resolution of its pending en banc or full-court review of the panel’s broader Opinion and Judgment, “because of the irreparable harm [the PG] will necessarily suffer if it is forced to comply with the Injunction Order but ultimately prevails on its petition.” The company has not yet filed for that rehearing. The deadline to do so is this coming Monday, Nov. 24, and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit will decide whether to grant it.
Meanwhile, because the court’s Nov. 10 rulings gave the journalists what they demanded throughout their three-year-plus strike — bargained-for provisions the company had eliminated or reduced, such as a guaranteed 40-hour workweek and short-term disability time — the journalists voted to end the strike and notified the PG of their intent to return to work, also this coming Monday, Nov. 24.
As of Thursday afternoon, the company had not responded to the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about that. The journalists still plan to report to the PG’s North Shore newsroom for work that morning and are inviting their community supporters to join them there for a 9:15 a.m. rally.
“It’s their right to appeal, [but] we have faith in the facts of our case,” Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Andrew Goldstein told the Union Progress on Thursday afternoon. “The PG can delay as long as it wants, but in the end, justice will be done.”
The PUP is the publication of the striking workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
