Contact: Moira Bulloch, CWA Communications MBulloch@cwa-union.org, 202-434-1168
PHILADELPHIA – Lawyers representing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette struggled to explain to a panel of judges why they should be exempt from federal labor law in two consecutive sets of oral arguments on Monday afternoon in the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The first case was on the enforcement of a September 2024 ruling from the National Labor Relations Board ordering the Post-Gazette to restore the contract it illegally tore up with editorial workers (members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, TNG-CWA Local 38061) in 2020. Those contract terms included workers’ health care, paid time off, short-term disability, and arbitration rights over discipline, among other issues. If the panel — Judges Chung, Restrepo, and Bibas — enforce the order, then the PG will have to restore those terms and pay back workers for the increased costs of health care, paid time off the company took from them, and other burdens passed off by the PG.
Following those arguments, the PG also stared down contempt charges over its refusal to restore better health care terms that the same court already ordered it to give back to bargaining unit employees. That includes people currently working for the Post-Gazette. The PG initially appealed the March ruling by requesting to deny its picket line-crossing workers the health care, then appealed the decision altogether. Both requests were refused by the 3rd Circuit Court.
“Yesterday Post-Gazette management showed up unprepared and once again asked to be rewarded for its delay tactics,” said Jon Schleuss, International President of The NewsGuild-CWA. “Our members deserve swift justice and PG bosses need to face the consequences of their illegal behavior now. ”
In the first oral arguments a company attorney failed to answer basic questions about the company’s own arguments and contradicted its own filings and reporting repeatedly. He also told judges the company had offered to show the Guild financial records that it had not, and at one point spent minutes quibbling with a judge about whether the angle of a cell phone held by company-contracted security guard meant he was surveilling workers or, as the attorney claimed, could have been watching a video. This earned a sharp scolding from a second judge about the standard of evidence the PG lawyer was flailing to argue against.
In the contempt arguments, the PG attorney falsely argued that it was impossible for the paper to put workers back on the health care it had previously bargained and agreed to. He also refused to say if it could afford to do so, despite repeated, pointed questioning from the bench. At one point an attorney from the National Labor Relations board noted for the court that, while the Post-Gazette was arguing in court that getting rid of its illegally implemented health care plan wouldn’t necessarily mean giving workers the better plan it was ordered to restore, the PG had already published reporting saying the opposite.
“The Post-Gazette continued to disrespect workers and make a mockery of the legal system by bringing the same tired arguments — and even going as far to introducing a couple of new ones — that brought us to this point,” said Zack Tanner, striking interactive designer and Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh president. “We’ve been saying for years that the PG is wasting time trying to distract from the illegal things it’s already said and done. Yesterday it showed federal judges that same behavior. Justice is long overdue.”
The Post-Gazette has repeatedly violated federal labor law for years and was already ordered to reverse course by an administrative law judge in January 2023 as well as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which expanded on that earlier ruling, in September 2024.
In July 2020, the PG claimed it had bargained to an impasse with the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and declared unilateral changes to editorial workers’ conditions that included forcing them onto a health care plan that cost families as much as an additional $13,000 or more per year. The imposed terms also took away a week of vacation from the most veteran workers, removed the bargained right to a guaranteed work week, stripped workers of their short-term disability plan, and eliminated union jurisdiction over their work.
Oral arguments finished with judges calling counsel from all parties to the side of the bench for an off-the-record discussion.
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About CWA: The Communications Workers of America represents working people in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, manufacturing, tech, and other fields.