Pittsburgh Post Gazette reporters walked out of the newsroom three years ago in response to unilateral changes to their healthcare. It’s the longest ongoing strike in the United States. Strikers now await an appellate court decision regarding the Post- Gazette’s failure to follow an order to reinstate the workers healthcare plan.
The strike began on Oct. 18, 2022, after the union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the Post Gazette for unilaterally changing workers’ healthcare plan to one that puts greater costs on the employees.
It was not the first labor dispute prior to the strike. The union filed several other unfair labor practice charges over the years leading up to the strike. Allegations included that the Post Gazette declared an impasse after bargaining in bad faith, stopped guaranteeing a 40-hour workweek, and ended payments to the workers’ healthcare plan.
Though some of the charges were later dismissed, in Sept. 2024 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found the Post Gazette did not bargain in good faith and unlawfully changed the healthcare plan.
“ If you look back at the history of the Post Gazette, there are many, many unfair labor practice charges. Any one of which, quite frankly, we could have struck over,” said Andrew Goldstein, a Post Gazette reporter currently on strike. He said the change to healthcare was, “ the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
When the strike began, five unions representing different groups of employees participated. Since then, the Teamsters Local 211/205 union, which originally led the strike, agreed to a settlement in April 2024 that dissolved their union, and in March 2025, production and advertising workers accepted buy-outs and dissolved their union as well.
The number of strikers has therefore dwindled from around 120 to nearly 30 due to the settlements and strikers leaving the Post-Gazette to seek employment elsewhere, according to Goldstein. All remaining strikers are members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, the union that represents Post-Gazette reporters.
“ We all had different needs, different issues with contracts and other workplace issues that arose and we all fought together very hard through the course of this long strike,” Goldstein said.
Remaining strikers are waiting for a decision by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals following an injunction issued in March this year ordering the company to reinstate the previous healthcare plan and prohibiting further unilateral changes to terms and conditions of employment.
“ We are very confident that we are going to have a victory soon and return to the Post Gazette with a win, hopefully in the very near future,” Goldstein said.
A spokesperson for the Post-Gazette did not immediately respond to a request for comment.