During the week of January 13, 2025, workers striking against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made yet another outreach to the board members of Block Communications, Inc. in an attempt to urge the company to stop breaking federal labor law and finally treat their workers fairly. These letters were sent via both USPS letters and email. As of this posting, no one from the board has responded.

To Whom It May Concern,

As you may have recently read, your company is staring down a second federal injunction — with strong enforcement powers outside the executive branch of the government — and its dirty laundry is getting increasingly aired publicly.

Just this week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected your attempts at banning us from picketing. Part of that decision means that not only did you waste your time and money, but also that you’ll be quite literally paying for the time our lawyers spent knocking down your case.

After ignoring the orders of a federal administrative law judge in January 2023, and continuing to ignore the affirmation — and expansion — of that order by the National Labor Relations Board in September 2024, your company now faces a rare request for injunction that currently sits in the hands of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court. 

In the likely event that the NLRB and the workers of the newspaper win this request, the last seven years of bad-faith bargaining by your company will be wiped away, and the 2014-17 collective bargaining agreement will be restored. This means seven years of legal fees will have been for nothing, and you and your company will have to start anew to reach an agreement with us — all while following stricter rules for bargaining set forth by a federal judge with strong enforcement powers.

A week prior to that filing, John R. Block invited the Pittsburgh Labor Choir, including a striking newsroom worker, into his historic Victorian Shadyside home. The topics of discussion ranged widely, but certainly a focus was the current labor situation at your Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 

“We should try something different,” Mr. Block said to the labor choir on Dec. 18. Mr. Block went on to add, “Nobody listens to me.” When Karen Block Johnese was chairing the Block Communications Inc. board for much of last year, workers at the Toledo Blade were told in bargaining that it wasn’t known who was running the company.

What about now? And how do you expect those questions to be clarified internally — much less publicly?

Because it is clear that you receive incomplete information about the goings-on of the company you oversee, we are offering to clarify the reality on the ground with an agendized presentation at your January board meeting. 

We believe our presence might spare you further embarrassment from the increasingly public divisions, and their consequences, many of which were recently reported in Pittsburgh NPR affiliate WESA.. 

It’s clear that some of you have been wondering how you and your fellow board members lost control of the company, both in Pittsburgh, and beyond.

“I’m a minority owner. There is a majority that out-votes me,” Mr. Block told WESA. “It’s frustrating for me because I’m not directly involved in labor relations. And I have to think that I could get it solved if I were. But people other than me are the experts and they’re supposed to take care of it. And so I’m on the sidelines like everybody else. And unhappy about that.”

When a family member who owns 25% of your company is speaking out about his unhappiness, and directing that unhappiness at the people at your company who are “supposed to take care of” the labor issues, it leaves far more than strikers questioning the chaos you seem to be navigating in the dark.

It is safe to say that the striking Post-Gazette workers are eager to get our portion of your troubles resolved, and get back to work with a new collective bargaining agreement in hand. 

Considering that some of you have made donations to some of the most pro-labor politicians in the country in recent election cycles, we can only assume that you’d like to personally see to it that your company complies with federal labor law in addition to putting other unnecessary drama behind you.

We are eager to discuss where things actually stand at the Post-Gazette, and would be happy to enlighten your fellow board members. Will you move to hear from us at your upcoming board meeting?

You can contact us to coordinate such an appearance — remote or in-person — at pghguild@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

Striking workers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette