March 18, 2018 – The regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has determined that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette violated federal law when it refused to pay a 2018 increase in the health care costs for 150 members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh while the union and management are involved in contract negotiations.
The Guild filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the company in January because it refused to pay a 5 percent increase in the health care premium, thereby unilaterally cutting health care benefits. Companies involved in bargaining are required by federal law to maintain the same level of wages and benefits of expired contracts.
The Guild has been involved in contract negotiations with the paper for more than a year. Its contract, and those of other unions at the paper, expired March 31, 2017.
Because of extensive wage cuts, Guild members are earning 10 percent less than they did in 2006, the last time there was a raise. Also during that time, pensions have been frozen, benefits have been cut, health-care coverage has decreased. Yet the cost of everything — including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette itself — has increased dramatically.
The Post-Gazette, like most newspapers in the country, loses money but its highly profitable parent company, the family-owned Block Communications Inc., is able to write off those losses and regularly earns more than $100 million in profits annually. Still, over the last year, in some of the most contentious contract talks at the paper in history, the company is demanding even more givebacks.
“Our hope is that the NLRB’s decision is a wakeup call to BCI that it should stop listening to [BCI law firm] King & Ballow and cease wasting money trying to defend its violation of federal law,” said Michael A. Fuoco, a veteran Post-Gazette reporter and local president. “It is time for BCI to negotiate fairly and equitably with the Guild and all unions and to quit wasting money on a law firm that apparently is not interested in negotiating in a substantive way but only in lining its coffers.”
In late January, all Guild members withheld their bylines from their stories, photographs, columns and graphics for four days in protest of the ULP and the more than 12 years of pay cuts and other concessions demanded by BCI. Those who work behind the scenes–copy editors, page designers, web editors and others –wore stickers reading “I Support the Byline Strike.” Participation among local members was 100 percent.
Additional Guild actions are possible if BCI refuses to remedy its current unfair labor practice and to bargain in a fair and equitable manner.
For more from the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, click here.