The conversation ended quickly. Tanner had much to do in the next few minutes. The striking workers meet online every weekday at 10 a.m. to check in with each other and go over organizing tasks. It was a perfect time to share the good news. At 9:58, Tanner sent out a message to all strikers: \u201cEverybody come to this morning\u2019s meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moments later, those logging into the guild\u2019s Zoom account heard a song blaring over their computer speakers and headphones: \u201cCelebration\u201d by Kool & the Gang. It was a hint, and not so subtle. This is the day the strikers had been waiting for.<\/p>\n
Rick Davis, a striking sports editor, took the news calmly and stoically. He\u2019s not an excitable guy. But his wife, Katrina Pyo, realizing what had happened, sprung into action. She grabbed a few cans of spray paint and a large piece of cardboard, took the items outside and quickly created a sign. \u201cThird Circuit Ruled in our Favor,\u201d it read. \u201cWe Won!\u201d She placed the sign in the front yard for the benefit of all those neighbors who ask, \u201cHow\u2019s the strike going?\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Goldstein had stayed up late watching the Steelers\u2019 loss and was rubbing his eyes when Tanner\u2019s message about the meeting popped up on his phone. <\/p>\n
\u201cIs this real?\u201d he wondered. Goldstein took over as guild president 10 days earlier. He hopped into the meeting and joined Tanner in answering questions, discussing next steps and organizing a gathering on the North Shore later in the day.<\/p>\n
As soon as the meeting ended, around 11 o\u2019clock, he bolted from his apartment on Forward avenue in Squirrel Hill, darted across the street and sprinted through the lawn of Allderdice High School. Goldy, as he\u2019s known by his fellow strikers, hasn\u2019t shaved or cut his hair since the strike\u2019s beginning, so his long locks and beard blew in the wind.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a perfect scene,\u201d he recalled later. \u201cThere was a burst of sun and these golden leaves from big beautiful trees falling around me.\u201d He crossed Shady Avenue and pounded on the front door of a two-story brick home. His grandparents\u2019 home. \u201cCome in,\u201d a voice called out.<\/p>\n
Goldy entered. Inside sat his great aunt Sylvia. Every day Sylvia asks about the strike. Goldy never had any news. Today was different. Goldy raised his arms and announced, \u201cWe won!\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
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Post-Gazette strikers toast their victory on the North Shore on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (Steve Mellon\/Pittsburgh Union Progress)<\/p>\n
A few hours later, the strikers gathered on the North Shore to commemorate the historic day with a group picture in front of the Post-Gazette building. Davis brought the sign his wife had made, and the two of them held it high in front of the PG\u2019s third-floor newsroom so any peering managers would see.<\/p>\n
After a few photographs, the strikers walked down the street to a bar to toast their big day. Goldy did the honors. He kept it short and to the point.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou all know how grateful I am to all of you and to everyone\u2019s families,\u201d he said. \u201cThe sacrifices you\u2019ve made. You\u2019ve gone above and beyond what anyone could ever ask for. So, I just want to say cheers to the strikers. Cheers to the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Afterward, the strikers gathered in small groups, sipped on drinks and tried to process all that had happened the past several hours. How was a historically long strike supposed to end? No one knew. The announcement at the morning meeting seemed to stun everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was literally speechless,\u201d said photographer Pam Panchack, who sat at the bar next to her colleague and fellow photographer Allie Wimley. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe a decision had finally come down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard to celebrate,\u201d Wimley added. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of false alarms, so it took a while for me to realize this is a real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Natalie Duleba, standing nearby, agreed. A member of the guild\u2019s executive committee, she remembered the union\u2019s first bargaining session after the strike\u2019s beginning<\/a>. The union\u2019s bargaining committee sat across from attorney Richard Lowe, who represented the Post-Gazette. Veteran negotiators who\u2019d dealt with Lowe in the past told Duleba the sessions would be difficult. The PG\u2019s position never changed, no matter what concessions were offered by the guild.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018No, we\u2019re on strike now, it\u2019s going to make a difference,\u2019\u201d Duleba said. \u201cAnd that feeling lasted, I don\u2019t know, 30 seconds when the bargaining with Richard Lowe actually started.\u201d<\/p>\n The sessions proved fruitless. Then, in late January 2023, an administrative law judge handed the strikers a victory<\/a> by ruling the PG failed to negotiate in good faith, illegally imposed working conditions and unlawfully surveilled workers engaged in union activities. The newspaper, the judge ruled, must rescind the unilateral working conditions it had imposed and restore the union\u2019s previous contract.<\/p>\n This ruling generated a lot of excitement among strikers. It seemed then the strike would soon end. But the PG appealed the ruling and the strike continued. More than a year and a half later, in September 2024, the five-member National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., affirmed the administrative law judge\u2019s ruling<\/a>. Again, the PG appealed and the strike continued. Now, however, the newspaper is running out of appeals. (A story it published by the Post-Gazette on Monday night quoted a statement saying, \u201cWe will appeal to the\u00a0full Third Circuit Court of Appeals.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cSo even though this is the end of the line legally for them, I think that we\u2019ve all been trained to just hold our breath and just make sure that it\u2019s actually happened before we celebrate,\u201d Duleba said.<\/p>\n Striker Erin Hebert understood, then offered a \u201cbut.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201dI think we\u2019re all hesitating to celebrate too much because we feel like the other shoe might drop,\u201d she said. \u201cBut there\u2019s no shoe coming. There\u2019s none left. They\u2019re out of shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis, the sports editor, couldn\u2019t help himself \u2013 he compared the current situation to a sporting event.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been in sports all my life and until I see zeros on that clock on the scoreboard, the game\u2019s not over,\u201d he said. \u201cI apologize for the sports analogies, but, you know, we might be up 30 points with less than a minute to play, but there\u2019s still a minute to play. You know, for the past three years, we have allowed ourselves to celebrate and enjoy every victory along the way. But then after two months after that victory, we\u2019re still on the strike and we\u2019re saying, \u2018OK, what next?\u2019 I\u2019m waiting for that scenario. Is it PTSD? Probably. But I just can\u2019t get excited until I see that there\u2019s no time left on that clock.\u201d<\/p>\n Striker Tyler Pycena stood across from Davis, nodding his head. For him, it took a while for the news to settle in. Now he was allowing himself to smile. \u201cIt\u2019s really inspiring to hear this verdict,\u201d he said. \u201cWe held a company that tried to break federal labor law to account. We did not allow our employer to just trample on us. When that sinks in, you can smile.\u201d<\/p>\n Panchak saw the victory as a win for all workers. She thought about all the other workers who\u2019ve organized their workplaces the past few years, and those who\u2019ll do so in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always insisted that this strike is about baristas, it\u2019s about nurses, it\u2019s about all workers who are exploited for the benefit and profit of a larger corporation,\u201d she said. \u201cMost folks don\u2019t want to be millionaires. They\u00a0 just want to work eight hours a day, get their paycheck, have their vacation, have their health care, and just have just a normal life. They don\u2019t want to work 12 hours a day like those tech nuts do.\u00a0I mean, Elon Musk thinks 12-hour days should be the thing now. He thinks you should just sleep in your office.\u201d<\/p>\n When Wimley first came to Pittsburgh to work at the Post-Gazette, she thought she\u2019d be in the city a few years, then move on \u2013 and that would be the pattern of her journalist\u2019s life, jumping from one job to another, one city to another. She thinks differently now.<\/p>\n \u201cI moved here, and I\u2019ve fallen in love with Pittsburgh,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve made Pittsburgh home, and I don\u2019t want to leave. And I think that\u2019s, like, something that should just be normal, that you can stay in one place.\u201d<\/p>\n The Third Circuit\u2019s decision was a step toward creating working conditions and compensation that make staying possible.<\/p>\n News of the court\u2019s decision released a flood of emotions for Hebert. She logged into the morning\u2019s meeting a few minutes late and \u201cwhen I realized what was happening, I just broke down crying for about 30 straight seconds,\u201d she said. \u201cI had my head in my hands, and was full-body sobbing when it hit me.\u201d<\/p>\n All day, her emotions had been bouncing between shock and joy. \u201cSlowly, the weight of the past three years is finally starting to lift,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really overwhelming. It\u2019s still kind of hard for me to get my thoughts straight about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Hebert is co-chair of the guild\u2019s Health and Welfare Committee, which is charged with making certain strikers have the resources to pay their bills, and have access to health care. She\u2019s been moved by the connections strikers have forged with each other the past three years. Those connections will pay off in the weeks ahead, as the strikers return to work at the Post-Gazette.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to go back in there with all of this collective strength from the fact that we\u2019ve stuck together,\u201d she said \u201cWe\u2019ve worked through many disagreements on strategy, we\u2019ve had conflicts and all of the things that could possibly happen when you have an institution that\u2019s run by humans.\u201d<\/p>\n The strike, she said, required workers to assume \u201ca baseline radical honesty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be honest with yourself and also with whoever you\u2019re organizing with about your strengths, your limitations, what you\u2019re going through. We were forced to be very vulnerable with each other early on.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis thought about those days when the weight of the strike seemed overwhelming. It was tempting, in those times, to call it quits.<\/p>\n \u201cI guarantee you, every one of us probably thought about it at least once a day,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you look at your financial situation, when you look at what it\u2019s doing to you and your family. If you didn\u2019t think about it, there was something wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cBut now we can hold our heads high. We did the right thing, and nobody can take that away from us. Not the scabs, not management, not the Blocks. Nobody can say what we did was wrong because we have federal judges who are agreeing with us. We have the NLRB who agreed with us. Everybody along the way agreed with us.<\/p>\n \u201cSo anything from this point on, in my eyes, is gravy. Because we did it, we stood tall, we\u2019re standing tall, and we can be as proud as hell. \u201c<\/p>\n Pycena was thinking about the strike supporters, all those people who voluntarily joined strikers picket lines \u2014 often at ungodly early morning hours and in wet, cold conditions \u2014 and who donated money and time. This was a strike of T-shirt sales, fund-raising phone calls, bake sales, pleas for funds from the guild\u2019s parent union, the Communications Workers of America, which stepped up with a large donation. Strikers spoke regularly at meetings of the Allegheny\/Fayette Labor Council, and members stuffed bills into the guild\u2019s bucket.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, this would not have happened without people actually giving a shit about us,\u201d Pycena said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t just do it ourselves. It literally would not be financially feasible. So we\u2019ve had people not just give a shit about us morally, but they put their money where their mouth is and helped pay for rents and emergency car bills, they helped when people\u2019s furnaces broke down in the winter, when their air conditioning broke down in the summer. Without them, we could not have made it. This is everyone\u2019s win.\u201d<\/p>\n
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