FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
10/8/2025
Contact: PGHGuild@gmail.com
PITTSBURGH — Early in Tuesday night’s Allegheny County Council meeting, members of council issued a proclamation honoring the resilience of workers on strike from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“The striking journalists — members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh — who have been holding the picket line for three years against ownership’s relentlessly lawless union-busting are vowing to stand strong on the picket line until Pittsburgh Post-Gazette leadership comes to its senses, quits breaking federal law, and restores their rights,” County Council Member-at-Large Bethany Hallam said, reading the proclamation.
In addition to stressing the importance of local journalism, Tuesday night’s proclamation detailed some of the struggles strikers have faced, including local law enforcement physically breaking picket lines and executive editor Stan Wischnowski attempting — unsuccessfully — to prosecute one of his own reporters.
On Oct. 18, 2022 members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh went out on strike against the company’s numerous violations of their rights and federal labor law. Throughout the strike, union editorial workers have demanded dignified health care and a restoration of the working conditions the PG illegally tore up five years ago.
In July of 2020, the PG imposed 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 as well as banked sick days, and eliminated union members’ jurisdiction over their work, among other issues.
Multiple authorities have ruled the company’s behavior illegal, including its bad faith bargaining. But most of those boards and judges lack enforcement power. In July of this year, however, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Post-Gazette lawyers regarding the enforcement of an NLRB ruling ordering the PG to undo the illegally imposed terms, among other remedies for its attempts at union busting. The Circuit Court also held a contempt hearing regarding the PG’s refusal to comply with a March injunction issued by the same court that ordered the company to restore its previously bargained health care plan to all Guild bargaining unit employees — including those crossing the picket line.
At the Philadelphia oral arguments in July, an attorney representing the paper failed to answer basic questions about the PG’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. The same attorney drew a sharp scolding from one judge after the company lawyer spent several minutes quibbling with another judge about whether the angle of a cell phone held by a company-contracted security guard meant the contractor was surveilling workers or, as the attorney claimed, watching a video.
If the Circuit Court successfully enforces the previous NLRB board ruling, the strikers’ demands will have been met.
Toward the end of the Tuesday night proclamation reading, Hallam went on to emphasize the importance of a strike victory for the community as a whole.
“The potential for a democratic society depends on us all having access to reliable, independently reported information in order to make decisions about our lives, and Post-Gazette leadership is actively working to undermine that possibility by perpetuating one of the most lawless union-busting operations in this country,” Hallam said, reading the proclamation. “By putting their fingers on the scale for ultra-wealthy people who violate the rights of our neighbors, public trust in the news is undermined at a time when — now more than ever — we need a shared understanding of reality with our neighbors.”
Strikers continue to produce award-winning local journalism in the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Community supporters, including many members of County Council, continue to aid in the strikers’ fight by maintaining a strike solidarity pledge of refusing to speak to the Post-Gazette.
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