Federal judge rejects NLRB injunction sought by Post-Gazette unions

A federal judge has rejected an injunction request filed by the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of three striking unions against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. If granted, the injunction would have forced the newspaper to allow workers to return to the job as negotiations and legal actions continue.

Newsroom and production workers have been on the picket line for more than two years in what has described as the longest ongoing work stoppage in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon, in a 10-page ruling issued late this week, sided with Post-Gazette, saying a claim of bad faith bargaining brought by the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the production unions was unlikely to succeed. The ruling impacts typographical staffers, press workers and mailers who walked off the job in October 2022 over a dispute over health care insurance.

Two weeks later, Post-Gazette journalists went on strike, citing similar concerns. All four unions remain on the picket line. The newspaper continues to appeal the NLRB’s determination of bad-faith bargaining with regard to newsroom journalists.

Union attorney Joe Pass on Saturday declined comment on the court ruling.

“We’ll do what we have to do, but at this point we have no comment,” Pass said.

The unions said in July 2020 the Post-Gazette improperly claimed it had bargained to an impasse and declared changes to editorial workers’ conditions that included they be a part of a health care plan that cost families an additional $13,000 or more per year. It also took away a week of vacation from veteran workers, removed the right to a guaranteed work week, removed workers of their short-term disability plan and eliminated union jurisdiction over their work, according to the union.

The NLRB ruled against the Post-Gazette last September. Striking newsroom workers originally were included in the injunction request for the other unions on strike. They were removed from that case because the National Labor Relations Act only applies to workers who have not yet obtained an NLRB ruling.

Claims of bad-faith negotiations involving the production unions are pending. They include allegations that the newspaper improperly changed work conditions related to a reduced print publication schedule. The Post-Gazette publishes two print editions each week, on Thursday and Sunday.

Bissoon, who serves in the Western District of Pennsylvania, lamented the newspaper industry’s decline in her ruling.

“As much as we might wish otherwise, market forces care not a whit. Few newspapers have been able to sustain the print model that, for over a century, served the needs of ownership, employees and readers. History is littered with the remnants of once sustainable industries laid to waste by ‘advances,’ shifts in market forces or both,” Bissoon wrote.

TribLive continues to publish two editions of the Tribune-Review, in Westmoreland County and in the Alle-Kiski Valley, seven days a week.