The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s most momentous gathering since the formation of a strike picket line more than three years ago began last week in the manner of all big strike meetings – with the arrival of a half dozen boxes of pizza. Pepperoni, plain, and a vegetarian option. Strikes run on pizza. Turns out they also can begin to end on them.
Several pies, in fact, arrived on North Shore Drive on the brisk Monday that was Oct. 18, 2022, when the strikers first walked out of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom because the PG had violated federal labor law. The workers said they would not go back to their jobs until their employer followed the rules.
They had no idea it would take so long and become the nation’s longest ongoing strike, or that it would take a federal court order to hold the company to account. But with such a court order issued, they have voted to end the strike and on Monday informed the company that they intend to return to work next week. How soon they will actually be back at work and bring the strike to its official end is, like everything else about this labor dispute, complicated.
Last Monday, Nov. 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District gave the strikers their biggest win, granting an application for enforcement of the NLRB ruling for the strikers in September 2024. That ruling upheld an NLRB administrative judge’s ruling in January 2023, which stated company had violated the National Labor Relations Act in several ways.
The judges affirmed that the PG must restore the previous 2014-17 contract, including the journalists’ health care coverage, and bargain with the union for a new contract, at the union’s request, before making changes to employees’ terms and conditions of employment. That will restore bargained-for provisions the company had eliminated or reduced, such as a guaranteed 40-hour workweek, short-term disability time, paid time off and the right to fight discipline from managers and more.
Later on Nov. 10, the PG announced its intention to appeal the ruling by seeking a rehearing by the full Third Circuit Court and, if necessary, appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
But the strikers and parent union, the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, already were declaring the court ruling a victory, in that it grants everything they’ve been striking for.
So Newspaper Guild called this momentous meeting for Thursday, Nov. 13, at Downtown’s United Steelworkers Building, which has served as strike headquarters, and ordered Papa Allen’s, the strike’s official pizza. It was the strike’s Day 1,122.
Striking Post-Gazette photographer Matt Freed casts a ballot on whether to end his union’s strike during a meeting on the second floor of the United Steelworkers Building in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
The meeting opened with discussions led by newly elected guild President Andrew Goldstein with the local’s attorney Joe Pass, who talked about the PG’s published threat to close the newspaper if the court ruling stands. The newspaper has stated it cannot afford the costs of abiding by the ruling. Pass reminded the strikers that the PG’s attorneys don’t make the claim in bargaining sessions that the company has an inability to pay increases, and they won’t let the union look at the company’s financial books.
One of the 22 strikers in the room, plus three attending via Zoom, made a motion that they vote to end the strike and unconditionally return to work.
And after more discussion, they took a secret ballot, with each of the present strikers writing on a slip of paper either “Yes” or “No” to ending the strike, then dropping their votes into a cardboard box at the front of the room with the others sending theirs in via texts.
The motion passed by an 84% margin.
Most of the strikers applauded and some removed to The Yard in Market Square for a drink.
A committee of three strikers — Rob Joesbury, Steve Karlinchak and Helen Fallon — huddled in a conference room on the second floor of the United Steelworkers Building in Pittsburgh to count votes after fellow strikers cast ballots on whether to end their labor action on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025. (Pam Panchak/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
This Monday afternoon, the 1,126th day since the strike started, Pass sent the PG a letter notifying the company that the guild members intend to unconditionally return to work at the North Shore newsroom at 10 a.m. on next Monday, Nov. 24. Per federal labor law, the journalists are entitled to their jobs back, but as the Guild’s news release notes, the company has some say about timing, so it “asked the company to inform strikers if they are being asked to report at a different time or place.”
According to the release, “When workers vote to end an unfair labor practice strike and make the kind of return to work offer given to the Post-Gazette on Monday, the struck employer has five days to make arrangements to bring the strikers back.” If on the sixth day the company has not returned strikers to work, it begins to owe them, as well as those currently working, pay and benefits per the contract terms the strikers won.
The PG has continued to publish digitally daily and also in print on Thursdays and Sundays with workers who did not go on strike or who were hired after the strike started.
The returning journalists could be working with them while the company seeks an “en banc” rehearing of the case before the full Third Circuit Court, something that union leaders believe is unlikely to be granted. But they believe the company has as many as a total of 45 days to file that petition, and the court then has time to consider it, and an appeal to the Supreme Court could take years.
Additional legal maneuvering seems guaranteed.
Four production unions that went on strike 10 days before the journalists did in 2022 already have settled with the company and have dissolved their locals or unit. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh remains the bargaining agent for all the journalists working at the PG and intends to bargain a new contract for them.
“Every single step of the way, we have told the company and decision makers within it that this is what would happen,” Goldstein said in Monday’s news release. “They could’ve saved so much money and trouble by listening to us then. It’s certainly time for them to listen to us now, comply with the order, and get down to bargaining a new contract with the old contract in place.”
The Guild release reiterated how throughout the three-year-plus strike, community members have consistently supported the strikers, including by donating more than $1 million for their daily needs, boycotting the PG and instead reading and advertising in this strike paper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress.
“While the Post-Gazette has spent the last several years tarnishing the paper’s reputation with the community it claims to serve, we have been able to restore and foster connections with Pittsburghers whose stories are often overlooked,” striking copy editor and Guild first vice president Erin Hebert said in the release. “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.”
Goldstein emphasized in a post-strike-vote letter to Guild members last week, “We should relish in our victory,” including with long-thought-about victory parties. In fact, the Newspaper Guild public “Victory Party” is now scheduled for Dec. 1 at Bottlerocket Social Hall in the city’s Allentown neighborhood.
Read the full news release here: https://pghguild.com/2025/11/17/post-gazette-strikers-send-company-return-to-work-offer/
This story will be updated as it develops.
Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.