As Post-Gazette employee representatives consider a strike, analysts say strategy can be dicey - TribLIVE

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A strike is “in the arsenal” for newspapers to use in labor negotiations, said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute.

But it’s “sort of the atomic bomb,” he said.

Edmonds, referring to a potential strike by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said these work stoppages once were commonplace but have been a rarity in recent years because the industry, itself, has been in decline.

“It’s a very different climate,” Edmonds said. “I think it’s very high stakes to go on strike.”

The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh authorized a strike vote Monday evening. The union represents 123 reporters, photographers, copy editors and artists at the Post-Gazette. The union voted 88-31 in favor of a strike.

The boards of the national NewsGuild and its parent, the Communications Workers of America, will meet to consider whether to authorize a strike. If those boards approve the move, CWA President Christopher Shelton would set a date for the strike to begin, according to NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss.

The NewsGuild board is set to meet this week, Schleuss said.

Two other bargaining units within the newspaper also are represented by the CWA, one representing mailers and another representing advertising and finance. Both have endorsed a strike. Press workers and drivers are represented by the Teamsters, Schleuss said.

“This company has a long history of bargaining in bad faith with every single group,” Schleuss said.

Management at the Post-Gazette has not responded to requests for comment.

“The reason they’re not commenting is there’s nothing they can say to justify the actions they’re taking,” Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Michael Fuoco said.

The move to consider a strike comes after more than three years of tenuous negotiations between the Guild and Block Communications Inc., the newspaper’s parent company, which also owns The Toledo Blade.

On July 28, the Post-Gazette management announced that because contract negotiations had “reached an impasse,” it “implemented certain portions of its final contract offer to the Guild.” Fuoco called the act one of “bad faith” and said the imposed working conditions are unacceptable.

Conditions are the worst they’ve been in the 86-year history of the Guild at the newspaper, he said.

If approved, it would be the first newspaper strike in the United States since November 2004 at The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio. That strike lasted through July 2005. The Vindicator ceased publication a year ago.

Before that, journalists at the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on strike in 2000.

A two-year strike at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News started in 1995.

That strike divided families, ended friendships and left a lasting impact on Detroit, said Bill McGraw, who spent 37 years as a reporter, columnist and editor at the Free Press. “The toll can be very high.”

Retired from journalism, McGraw remains a staunch union supporter but noted the impact a newspaper strike would have on the community.

The media landscape is much different than it was 25 years ago, McGraw said. “I would say to the people considering the strike: ‘Is that the best alternative?’ I would just say be really cautious.”

Amid the strife at the Post-Gazette, the company has offered buyouts several times and scaled back its printing schedule. There was a one-month byline strike last year that was preceded by a no-confidence vote in management.

Also in 2019, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Post-Gazette Publisher and Editor-in-Chief John Robinson Block after a tirade in the newsroom.

If the workers strike, it won’t be the first time the Post-Gazette has been stopped by a labor dispute.

In 1992, a delivery-drivers strike stopped the presses for eight months, at both the Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press. The Press, part of the Scripps-Howard chain, was the dominant paper that was in a joint operating agreement with Post-Gazette. When the Press negotiated with its unions, the Post-Gazette was tied to whatever occurred.

As the strike wore on and threatened the survival of both papers, Scripps eventually sold the Press to Blade Communications, the Post-Gazette’s owner (now named Block Communications, Inc). The company’s first move was to close the Press. The Post-Gazette then had to negotiate new contracts with 11 unions in order to get the paper up and running again.

William Block Sr., who began his career at the Post-Gazette just after World War II, was the longtime publisher.

“The negotiations were not difficult,” said former Post-Gazette labor relations manager Ray Burnett. “It was a positive atmosphere under which those negotiations were conducted. And subsequent negotiations. There was an understanding that, ‘Hey, we’re trying to save the Post-Gazette.’

“The unions were much better off dealing with Mr. Block,” Burnett said.

Former Post-Gazette investigative reporter Bill Moushey, a professor of journalism at Point Park University, drew a contrast with the present labor conflict. “The difference is that Bill Block was the guy who solved the problem in ’92, and (his nephew) John Robinson Block is the guy that causes the problems between 2017 and 2020,” he said. “He will not negotiate in good faith. It’s a shame there’s a deal out there that could have been made three-and-a-half years ago.”

The Post-Gazette, which hired many staff members from the Press, began publishing again in early 1993 and enjoyed relative labor peace until its current union contract with reporters, photographers, copy editors and artists expired in 2017.

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