Scab J.D. Vance crosses News Guild picket line in Pittsburgh

CWA

PITTSBURGH—Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, his party’s vice-presidential nominee, is a scab. He crossed a picket line in Pittsburgh on October 24. And he follows in the 20-year-old footsteps of his convicted felon presidential running mate, Donald Trump.

Vance crossed the picket line of staffers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who just passed the two-year mark in their labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—strike against the paper’s notorious right-wing owners, the Block brothers.

Vance scabbed to deliver an op-ed, which the PPG published, alleging, without proof, that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, hates Catholics. Harris is an American Baptist whose church is in San Francisco. Her spouse, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.

“Our phones at the Pittsburgh Union Progress”—the strikers’ daily paper—“blew up Thursday morning with messages that J.D. Vance, the dude who wrote a book trashing the good people of Appalachia and then became Donald Trump’s running mate, had crossed a picket line. So, J.D. is a scab. Big surprise, right?

“It took us a moment to realize it was our picket line everyone was talking about.

“Perfect. Last week we raised a toast to mark our second complete year on strike. We toasted with the hard stuff. Two years of fighting an employer who flouts labor law is exhausting. This week, a man yearning to be a heartbeat from the presidency thumbs his nose at us writers by writing an op-ed, published Thursday, for our union-busting bosses.”

Both News Guild President Jon Schleuss and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler jumped on Vance.

“J.D. Vance is a piece of work,” Shuler opened her tweet.

“Post-Gazette workers have been on strike for two years, battling relentless union-busting. Today he crossed the picket line with his op-ed, throwing ThePUPnews and CWA-union members under the bus.” The News Guild is a CWA sector.

“J.D. Vance has crossed a very obvious picket line by striking Americans,” Schleuss said. “And J.D. Vance is a scab just like anybody else who crosses a picket line.

“By crossing our picket line, Vance aligned himself with the lawbreakers who run the Post-Gazette,” Schleuss said. “It’s a slap in the face to the workers who have made incredible sacrifices to fight against the company’s illegal actions and gone 24 months without a paycheck.”

Headed for federal court

Those union-busting Block brothers are headed for a comeuppance in federal court. National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has had it up to here with the Blocks’ defiance of rulings they broke labor law, and the duos’ refusal to bargain with The News Guild of Pittsburgh and three other striking unions.

So Abruzzo seeks a federal court 10(j) injunction against them, and the hearing is set before U.S. District Judge Cathy Bisson on October 28. The 10(j) is the NLRB’s strongest, and rarely used, weapon. General Counsels haul it out only when they conclude traditional remedies for labor law-breaking—ordering bargaining, posting a written notice the law-breaker will not sin again, and net back pay to harmed workers—aren’t enough to prevent irreparable damage to the workers.

10(j)s, when granted, force firms to immediately return workers to their jobs, repay them not just net pay but for all their expenses while forced out of work, order bargaining until a contract is reached, and threaten firm officers with jail for defiance. For what it’s worth, the week before, Judge Bisson tossed out the Blocks’ claims that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional.

Similar claims by multi-billionaire magnates Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, joined by former Starbucks CEO and chief stockholder Howard Schultz, are wending their way through federal courts in Trump-stacked Texas. They’re expected to land before the worker-hostile five-justice GOP-named U.S. Supreme Court majority. Trump named three of those jurists.

The Post-Gazette staffers had to strike two Octobers ago after the Block brothers unilaterally both raised the workers’ share of health care premiums while switching to a less-comprehensive system, all to pocket more dollars. They offered that package, plus skimpy raises, to workers who hadn’t had an increase in five years.

The workers, in four union locals, went on strike. NLRB administrative law judges, and the board itself, repeatedly ruled the Blocks broke labor law, converting the strike into one over their crimes.

As for Vance following Trump’s footsteps, and crossing a picket line, veteran IATSE member Dan Mahoney wrote a letter, posted on the AFL-CIO website, that Trump did that on the set of his hit TV show The Apprentice, in 2004.

“Crew members of your reality TV show were speaking up together to get paid fairly for the work they did on your show. You crossed the picket line right past me and the many hardworking men and women of ‘The Apprentice’ crew without looking any of us in the eye.

“The entertainment industry is hard work. The men and women who worked on your show are talented professionals who do everything from building the sets, lighting the sets, editing each episode, and doing wardrobe, hair, and makeup for you.

“You made millions from that show while denying your employees job protections, health and retirement benefits, and a union contract. Those men and women are now receiving the fair pay you denied them for so long” by unionizing with IATSE the same year Trump won the presidency.

“You lost my vote the day you refused to stand with working people.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.