On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt an expected final blow to the former Post-Gazette owners, the Block family, in their efforts to avoid accountability for years of blatant federal labor lawbreaking. The court refused to hear their latest wasteful plea.
Members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh struck for more than three years and have waited even longer to make this long-expected news possible.
The Blocks have no other choice but to pay millions of dollars back to current and former editorial union workers of the Post-Gazette — with interest. It’s money that should have been in our paychecks and benefits every single day since the PG — then under Block Communications Inc. — illegally tore up our contract in July 2020.
You made Monday’s news possible. We are extremely appreciative of the support you, our community, showed us during this drawn-out process as we both accelerated and waited for the slow mechanics of the justice system to reach this conclusion.
Of course, our fight for the caliber of news that Pittsburgh deserves continues on multiple fronts.
Fired former strikers, who are unemployed members of the Guild, soft launched The Pittsburgh Progress in late July. That’s an effort you’ve made possible and can further strengthen, too. When the Blocks announced in January that they were closing the Post-Gazette, community members and PG workers came together to figure out what you needed in a post-Block Pittsburgh journalism future.
Because you told us you wanted to feel ownership over your local news, we made the Progress a multi-stakeholder cooperative. You can quite literally co-own it with your neighbors and its workers and democratically decide aspects of how the business is run.
You can sign up right now on PittsburghProgress.com to become a subscriber to the Progress or a member of the Pittsburgh Progress Cooperative or both.
A small number of former strikers — about 80 percent of us got purged by new PG ownership — are still employees of the Post-Gazette and are working with those owners, the Venetoulis Institute of Local Journalism, to craft a new, robust contract. We’ve already bargained a few times, have found alignment on some basic important points and are looking forward to future sessions.
Pittsburgh needs more journalism jobs and more focus and media coverage on the struggles of working-class Pittsburghers — not less.
Whether you recognize some of the names and subjects on PittsburghProgress.com from our strike publication, the Pittsburgh Union Progress, or simply want to see independent, worker-led news, we encourage you to give our sample stories a read.
The article about this latest news is featured on The Progress website. There’s plenty more to read on the site regarding local news, labor, arts and culture, sports, and community. Ultimately, it’s journalism built by workers, with our neighbors, for Pittsburgh. You supported us through a grueling strike that we won, together, unequivocally and with finality.
We encourage you to continue in that same spirit as we continue to advocate for worker-focused journalism rooted in our community.
In solidarity,
Natalie Duleba
Former striker
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh local secretary
Pittsburgh Progress founding worker-member
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