PITTSBURGH—The News Guild’s long-running strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, prompted by the Block brothers’ plan to slash workers’ health care—and to cut it off after the workers walked—prompted one positive piece of news: Reps. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., and Sarah McBride, D-Del., reintroduced legislation that, nationwide, would to make yanking or cutting health care from striking or locked out workers an unfair labor practice.
And their bill, the Striking and Locked Out Workers Health Care Protection Act, would impose far higher fines when the National Labor Relations Board rules lack of health care breaks labor law.
The strike is now in its third year. Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, judges in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected tactics the Blocks used to try to delay being forced back to bargaining and restore health care, the strikers’ paper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress, said.
The NLRB, when it had a quorum and was functioning, and under then-General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, went to that appellate court to demand, and get approval for, using its strongest weapon, a federal injunction, against the Blocks.
The board had reached the end of its patience with the right-wing duo. The brothers are known for mistreatment of their newspaper workers—and their hatred of the Guild—in Pittsburgh and in Toledo, Ohio. In Toledo, the Blocks took 17 years to finally reach a contract with the Guild at the Toledo Blade. In Pittsburgh, they’ve defied lower court orders to bargain in good faith and reach a contract.
And late last year, News Guild President Jon Schleuss told a forum in D.C. on labor law that the Blocks’ conduct was so outrageous that they deserve jail terms, not just fines and injunctions.
The Blocks also forced a byline strike just over four years ago when one of the duo came down to the newsroom and ordered stories about the Trumpite invasion, insurrection and attempted coup d’etat at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to be rewritten in the invaders’ favor.
“CWA members at the Post-Gazette and all across the country know all too well the power of corporations that hold our healthcare hostage,” said union Government Affairs Director Dan Mauer.
“It is totally unconscionable for a company to cut off workers’ healthcare—putting the health of workers and their families in jeopardy—in retaliation for them standing up to protect their rights and dignity on the job. CWA is proud to support the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act and thanks Reps. Deluzio and McBride for their fearless leadership in standing up to protect workers’ healthcare and rights.”
“No company should be able to hold a worker’s health—or the well-being of their family—hostage during a labor dispute,” Deluzio said in reintroducing the legislation. “We need a level playing field, and this bill puts the act of ripping health insurance away from striking workers out of bounds.”
“Workers have a right to strike, and we have to defend that right by protecting workers from unfair strike-breaking tactics,” including yanking health care, said Deluzio, who represents much of Pittsburgh. He also introduced the bill in the last term’s Republican-run Congress. It went nowhere.
“No worker should be forced to choose between exercising their right to strike and protecting their family’s health,” added McBride. “When employers cut off health care during a strike or lockout, they aren’t negotiating. Workers deserve a voice at the table without having their lives or livelihoods held hostage. I’m proud to work with Rep. Deluzio to defend the right to organize, stand up for working families, and make sure that no one’s health is used as a bargaining chip.”
Other union leaders chimed in to support the pro-strikers’ legislation.
Quick to engage in cruelty
“Some employers are quick to engage in cruel retaliatory tactics. When employees try to exercise their right to withhold their labor, some employers take away health insurance, such as we saw recently with the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association” in Philadelphia, Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten explained.
“Until our country’s labor laws are reformed to level the playing field, stopgap laws are necessary to protect working people who have to resort to a strike to make their voices heard.”
A strike “is a necessary tool for workers to maintain as a last resort when employers resist negotiating in good faith. Yet too often employers attempt to leverage the threat of cutting off workers’ health insurance to limit this power and influence bargaining,” said Steelworkers President Dave McCall.
Workers should not lose their health insurance for exercising their lawful right to strike or be threatened with loss of health coverage during the bargaining process,” said Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers President Anthony Shelton. “This legislation will go a long way in leveling the playing field for workers in the collective bargaining process.”
“Warrior Met strikers had their health care coverage cut off when they went on strike April 1, 2021,” Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said of the 1,100 workers at that Alabama mine. His union “paid the health care coverage for those members for the 23 months of that strike. We strongly support this legislation and urge Congress to pass it.”
The fines for cutting off health care during a strike or lockout would be higher than normal, the two lawmakers said. “Under this bill, employers who commit the new unfair labor practices” would face fines “reflective of their history of violations, their size, the scope of the harm, and the public interest–a mechanism like what is in the PRO Act,” they said.
The PRO Act, labor’s top legislative priority, would have levelled, to a large extent, the playing field for workers against bosses in organizing drives, first contract negotiations, and other struggles. Fines would have been much higher, not just net back pay. Injunctions would have been easier to seek and get. Card-check recognition would be written into law, and more.
But a Senate Republican filibuster threat, plus defection of then-Sens. Joe Manchin, Ind-W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ind-Ariz., doomed the legislation—which would have been subject to an expensive and vicious corporate campaign of lies had it hit the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a three-judge panel of the federal appellate court is fed up with the
Blocks’ blocking tactics, the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strikers’ paper, reported. The Blocks sought two rulings to prevent them, as the injunction demands, from restoring pre-strike health care coverage at the Post-Gazette. On May 27, the appellate panel rejected their demands.
“The Post-Gazette’s attempts to evade its responsibility have exhausted the courts and exhausted every legal delay tactic, while our strikers’ determination and solidarity have only grown,” Zack Tanner, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh-CWA Local 38061, said in a statement.
“The Post-Gazette must immediately restore our health care for every member of our bargaining unit or risk the consequences of being in contempt of court,” he said. The ruling “is a clear signal it is time for the Post-Gazette to settle the strike by restoring the terms of our union contract before the courts take further action against the company’s lawless mistreatment of dedicated journalists.”
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