NewsGuild’s longest strike ends after historic court decision
The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals found the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette violated the National Labor Relations Act on several counts. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom worker strike is the longest continuing work stoppage in the U.S.
Update, Nov. 19, 1:15 p.m. PT:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette striking workers have ended their strike after a member vote on Nov. 13, with 84% of voting workers in favor, and have sent the Post-Gazette their return-to-work proposal, which could see them back in office on Nov. 24.
Under the terms of an unfair labor practice strike, the struck employer must confirm return-to-work arrangements for striking workers within five days of the strike’s end. If those arrangements aren’t confirmed by the sixth day, the Post-Gazette will owe workers pay and benefits under the original 2014-17 contract the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the newspaper to reinstate.
“We look forward to returning to our jobs, uniting around a common goal of serving our community with strong union journalism, and working through whatever challenges we will face when we are back inside,” striking copy editor and Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh first vice president Erin Hebert said in a NewsGuild press release.
Original story:
The longest ongoing strike in the U.S. — and the longest in the NewsGuild’s 92-year history — could be coming to an end.
Twenty-six workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, who have been on strike for over three years, learned Monday that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in their favor.
The court decision orders the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to repeal over five years of worker rights violations and compensate workers impacted by them. Those National Labor Relations Act violations include illegally surveilling striking workers, prematurely declaring impasse, and repeatedly failing to bargain in good faith.
“If you try to take up arms against a bunch of journalists, you are going to have a bad time, because we are smart, we are creative, and we are relentless,” Post-Gazette education reporter Andrew Goldstein, who has been at the paper since 2014, told The Objective.
“I don’t know what the P[ost]-G[azette] was thinking, that they were just easily going to step on us here,” he said. For much of the strike, Goldstein served as unit chair for the Post-Gazette’s union and was elected president of the entire union this month. “That was never going to happen.”
While newsroom workers are still on strike, he added that he expects to return to work soon, and the guild will vote to end the strike in the next couple of weeks.
The Post-Gazette company plans to appeal to the full Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision and said in a statement shared with The Objective that “if allowed to stand, this decision will likely force the closure of the Post-Gazette — ending nearly 240 years of continuous service to the people of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania.”
The ruling is the result of the court examining the Post-Gazette ownership’s appeal of a September 2024 decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB is the nonpartisan body enforcing federal labor laws.
News publishers have historically clashed with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935; an early 1937 case in the Supreme Court found the AP violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing a journalist for pushing for collective bargaining and organizing with the American Newspaper Guild — protected union activity.
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last had a contract in 2017. The unfair labor practice strike began in October 2022 with five unions, including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. The picket line had roughly 140 employees participating. Of those, around 60 were newsroom workers. The rest were design, production, distribution, and advertising staff.
As other unions struck contract deals and strikers left for other jobs or retirement, Goldstein said, the number of strikers shrank to the current 26 workers, who currently operate the union-run publication The Pittsburgh Union Progress. Staffers told The Objective in 2023 that the strike publication is the first of its kind in the digital age; it aims to be a forum for reporting that “couldn’t or wouldn’t” be published in the Post-Gazette.
Related: Business Outsider? Strike publications offer a glimpse of worker-owned media
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has maintained the same demands throughout: Restore the 2014-17 collective bargaining agreement, restore healthcare coverage, rescind unilateral working conditions imposed during 2020, and return to the table to bargain for a successor contract.
“Guild members would have been afforded more rights working without a contract than by accepting all of PG Publishing’s proposals,” wrote opinion author and Third Circuit judge Cindy Chung in the November decision.
Goldstein added that leaders at Block Communications, which owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade, have never once claimed an inability to pay during negotiations. Workers at the Blade have also been without a contract since 2017.
“The Blocks have never said they can’t pay this — it’s just that they’re unwilling to,” he said. The Objective has asked for comment from Post-Gazette leadership on why they anticipate closing the Post-Gazette should Monday’s ruling stand.
The Toledo NewsGuild released a statement of support after yesterday’s court decision, saying the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s fortitude was inspiring.
“It makes us more determined in holding the Blocks accountable in our community,” they wrote.
The union filed its first unfair labor practice charge during ongoing contract negotiations after what some employees called a “drunken newsroom tirade” from publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block in 2019. But in July 2020, although the guild had not finished reviewing the Post-Gazette’s latest contract proposal, the newspaper declared impasse after instituting a more expensive healthcare plan. Ownership imposed terms and conditions of employment that removed the right to a guaranteed work week, gutted short-term disability plans and paid time off, and eliminated union protections like having a representative present for conversations with managers.
In January 2023, the NLRB ruled that the Post-Gazette had been bargaining in bad faith and illegally surveilled workers. That decision ordered the paper to resume bargaining within 15 days of the decision, to reinstate working conditions to their pre-2020 state and restore the 2014-17 contract, and compensate workers who lost wages when the Post-Gazette made changes to working conditions in 2020.
The Post-Gazette leadership filed an appeal to send the ruling to appeals court. Parallel to that process, the NLRB filed for an injunction in 2024 requiring the paper’s leadership to return to the bargaining table. That injunction was rejected by U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon in February 2025.
Separate from the ongoing legal dispute around collective bargaining and labor violations, the NLRB issued another March 2025 requiring the Post-Gazette to restore the previous healthcare plan to workers. The Post-Gazette also did not reinstate that healthcare plan.
The latest Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling overrides the previous healthcare injunction.
Meanwhile, the Post-Gazette has continued to publish throughout the strike and, in its statement, said it “will continue to pursue every legal and business avenue available to protect our employees and defend the vital interests of Pittsburgh and a free press.”
The Post-Gazette has worked with freelancers and even other major news organizations that have crossed the picket line to produce coverage — like ProPublica did in 2023. The union also issued a statement of support in 2020, when management ousted a Black reporter, Alexis Johnson, while she was covering protests after George Floyd’s murder.
Related: ProPublica crossed the picket line
Goldstein said gestures of solidarity, both big and small, from other journalists have buoyed the striking Post-Gazette newsroom workers. For example, the New York Times Tech Guild donated the remaining $114,000 in their strike fund to the Pittsburgh strikers. Members of small newspaper unions in Pennsylvania and Ohio — some just encompassing three people — made monthly donations of $10 to the strike fund.
“Journalists have a responsibility to hold people to account, to hold the powerful to account, and if we’re unwilling to do that in our own workplace, then what’s the point of any of this?” Goldstein told The Objective. “You have to stand up for yourself. You have to stand up for the people working next to you. Because if you don’t, then why would the community trust you to stand up for them?”
James Salanga is the co-director of The Objective.
This piece was edited and copy edited by Gabe Schneider.
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