by Robert Wright
The Teamsters local representing striking drivers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have reached a settlement with the newspaper, accepting a buyout and ending their picket and dissolving their local. The settlement was negotiated in secret and apart from the other striking unions. According to the Teamsters local, the secret negotiations and separate settlement were demanded by the newspaper.
Workers at one of Pittsburgh’s largest papers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, have been on strike for a year and a half now. The workers across 5 unions consisting of journalists, mailers, advertising workers, pressmen, and Teamster truck drivers over contract negotiations with the Post-Gazette’s parent company Block Communications, a strike started by the Teamsters over proposed changes to their health coverage.
The President of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, Zack Tanner, commented in a press release from the CWA(Communication Workers of America) “After 18 months on strike, standing on the picket lines all day and late into the nights with Teamster drivers represented by Local 211/205, it’s extremely disappointing to see this unit fall for the company’s divide and conquer strategy.”
In the same press release, NewsGuild CWA President Jon Schleuss said, “It’s beyond disappointing that the Teamsters would abandon their fellow strikers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We stood with the Teamsters: in the cold, in the rain, in the snow and in the face of violent scab truck drivers and aggressive police. We will continue to strike and hold the employer to account. And we will never give up on our union or our members.”
The 18 month strike consisted of 5 unions, the now former Teamster Truck Drivers, multiple NewsGuild CWA chapters representing printing and design for the paper, and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh who joined the strike briefly after the Teamsters and CWA initialized it.
The trustee and business agent of the Teamsters 211/205, Joe Barbano, attempted to justify the decision by stating that their union was backed into a corner due to their falling membership. “A majority of them said we would take some type of a settlement, we’ll move on with our lives,” Barbano said. “And that’s what we did.” He also attempted to blame the Newspaper Guild for scabs crossing the picket line. “To be honest with you, the Guild, [around] 50% of their membership crossed the picket line,” Barbano said. “And they wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and they were able to get a paper out because of that.”
The strike initially began in October 2022 over the demands for fair wages, yearly raises, and affordable healthcare. It has been now 7 years since their last contract. In June of 2020, the Post-Gazette had declared an impasse in contract negotiations, which the National Board of Labor Relations later found that to be in violation of federal labor law for failing to bargain in good faith. The Post-Gazette strikers have fought for months against Block Communications’s attacks on working conditions, facing down violent scabs and attacks from the police. Striking journalists have produced the newspaper Pittsburgh Union Progress since the strike began.
The NewsGuild president Tanner concludes in the press release, “Newsroom workers won’t be broken, though. We will always stand strong against the company’s union busting tactics, just as we’ve stood strong against the bosses, cops, and scabs that have tried to break us.”
