[One year of a strike means] that striking workers have seen every season of greed and selfishness the Blocks have. It means that striking Pittsburghers aren’t afraid of a long fight if it’s fighting for what’s right.
Today marks a solemn day in Pittsburgh labor, social justice, and general histories – the one year anniversary of the strike by employees of our daily paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
It is also a celebration of resistance, resilience, and the real people who produce our paper. As a lifelong reader and strong believer in local media, I wanted to better understand the strike. To commemorate, we interviewed one of the leaders of the News Guild, Natalie Duleba.
Your Name: Natalie Duleba
Your Pronouns: she/her
Your Role: At the PG, I’m a designer, copy editor and web editor. In the union, I’m a member of the health & welfare and bargaining committees
How do you describe your identify? I’ve identified as bisexual since college, but in the sense of “attracted to at least two genders” as I’m attracted to folks who identify outside the gender binary.
What was your very first impression of Pittsburgh?
I was born in Cleveland, and I have never been a big sports fan and thus wasn’t part of the Browns/Steelers animosity, so growing up, Pittsburgh was mostly IKEA to me. However, in college I interned at the Andy Warhol-founded Interview Magazine, and my mother and I went to Pittsburgh for a day trip. We had a great time, and I got to see my name in an issue of the magazine at the Andy Warhol Museum. We said for years after how easy it was to get to and how much there was to do here. When I was ready to move on from Baton Rouge, seeing the job in Pittsburgh was like being able to come home. I arrived in early 2020, only about six weeks before the shutdown, so getting to know the city has been slow. I dog sit at other people’s houses, and I got to know Pittsburgh that way — through sampling different neighborhoods by walking dogs along steep streets lined with row houses. There’s so much to look at and discover, and I’ve enjoyed finding these places organically as I’ve gone along.
I like my job at the PG, and I’m committed to seeing the strike through. I own a home here. I deserve to work under fair conditions, under a contract bargained in good faith. I won’t be run out of town by the Blocks and their greed.
Tell us about the first LGBTQ person you met and what impact they had on your life?
I can’t say for sure who this is, probably my mother’s longtime hair stylist. I grew up Catholic, so being queer wasn’t really offered as an option. It wasn’t talked about at all, even negatively. My older sister joined a gay-sraight alliance when she was in high school, and I’m sure a good portion of her theater and marching band friends were queer in some manner, but I am six years younger than her, so it wasn’t talked about explicitly with me. The people I can say with certainty were the first queer folks I engaged with personally were the members of the house I lived in for two years in college. It was called the Women’s House at the time, and its focus was on gender and sexuality issues. My campus had several houses that focused on social issues and put on events each semester that tied to the mission of the house. You had to apply to be a member. The people I live with there were unabashedly queer and comfortable with being so, and I was able to reorient my life experiences and realize my own sexuallity. The first person I came out to was a member of that house, and I remember it being so easy because I knew it was safe. So not a single person, but the group of people I lived with then created that space for me that truly “offered” the option of being something other than straight.
What is the Pittsburgh News Guild? What are the other unions on strike?
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh is comprised of the editorial workers at the PG as well as the Point Park University faculty.
The other unions on strike are the mailers (CWA Local 14842), advertisers (CWA Local 14827), the press workers (PPPWU Local 24M/9N) and the Teamster drivers (Local 205/211).
You cannot survive a strike by yourself. Solidarity goes much deeper than you can imagine, until you’re out on the line like this.
Please summarize the key issues the unions are negotiating.
A very brief overview: The Guild has been without a contract since 2017, and in July 2020, the PG illegally declared an impasse to negotiations and imposed terms on the Guild. That included taking us out of our health care plan and placing us on a much worse and more expensive plan of the PG’s parent company, Block Communications Inc. Guild members lost vacation days, union security (meaning they can fire anybody whenever they want as though there was no union), and our health care costs tripled.
We won a large unfair labor practice case about this in January of this year. The company was ordered to undo the imposed terms, pay us back for lost benefits, and to bargain in good faith. The PG appealed and promised to exhaust its appeals.
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At the same time, the production and distribution unions have also been on expired contracts since 2017. And in October 2022, our striking union siblings lost their health care because the company refused to pay the $19 per week per employee increases in health care premiums to the health insurance provider the PG was still contractually obligated to. They then went on strike. And a week and a half later the Guild voted to join them on the picket line.
The strike demand are for the PG to reinstate health care, lift the imposed terms from 2020 to reinstate those of the expired 2017 Guild contract, and to return to the bargaining table in good faith.
The Pittsburgh Union Progress has been covering this extensively. You can read more background there at Strike news Archives – Pittsburgh Union Progress
We are approaching the one year anniversary of the strike. What does that milestone mean for Pittsburgh?
It means that its largest newspaper has refused to bargain with its own workers to this point. It means that striking workers have seen every season of greed and selfishness the Blocks have. It means that striking Pittsburghers aren’t afraid of a long fight if it’s fighting for what’s right. It means that we need more support than ever so the Blocks know that Pittsburgh won’t tolerate it any longer.
This is considered the first newspaper strike of the digital age. Does that resonate with you?
I don’t know if it does, mostly because we are striking over the same things that workers have been demanding since the inception of unions. We want fair pay and health care that won’t bankrupt us. We want a guaranteed work week. We don’t want to be pushed around on the whim of millionaires who have never had to worry about how their bills are going to be paid. We’re in a very pro-union time in the country, and I think people are paying attention in ways they weren’t able to before. That’s in thanks to the “digital age.”
I remember the 1992 strike (I was 21) and the shockwaves it sent through my parent’s working class neighborhood. How has the legacy of that strike echoed through the current strike? Is there anyone in the News Guild who was involved in that earlier strike?
I can’t really speak to this. I was born in 1992. There are some members on our picket line who experienced it. Our lawyer, Joe Pass, certainly was involved — you can see him marching in the archive footage.
Your career has taken you from Fairbanks to Baton Rouge. Why have you chosen to stay in Pittsburgh rather than move into a new job elsewhere?
I don’t want to leave, and I shouldn’t have to. I like my job at the PG, and I’m committed to seeing the strike through. I own a home here. I deserve to work under fair conditions, under a contract bargained in good faith. I won’t be run out of town by the Blocks and their greed.
What does a lead page designer do? How does your work enhance my experience reading the paper either IRL or online?
At the PG, this means designing the front page and front section of the paper — the first thing you see when you pick up a paper or open the e-edition. Most people don’t think about how the news gets presented to them. Page designers are a huge part of that. We “make” the pages you see, arranging the articles and photos, writing the headlines and captions, editing the content and so on. We present the news of the day to readers in that visual format, presenting that newspaper look. It’s subtle and most often unappreciated, but page designers do that every day.
The strike demand are for the PG to reinstate health care, lift the imposed terms from 2020 to reinstate those of the expired 2017 Guild contract, and to return to the bargaining table in good faith.
You also write; Do you prefer writing or design/editing work?
I have tried several times to make the switch to features writing at various newspapers. I love features and would most likely prefer that as my full-time job. But it’s hard to make that shift. I’m still trying. In the meantime, I enjoy design. I’m a visual-spatial person and so I am very good at it. My big-time dream is to be a romance novelist, and that sort of writing I prefer above all else. Still working on getting published; I wrote two novels during the pandemic and have plans for more.
Tell us about a typical day for you as a person on strike.
We have a 10 a.m. check-in meeting over Zoom, which then can lead into a committee-specific meeting to talk about future actions. Then it’s doing the tasks those actions require: calling people, posting to social media, writing up scripts or agendas. Sometimes, for me, it’s going to the Omni William Penn, Downtown, to participate in a bargaining session. For a lot of others, it’s covering an event or conducting interviews for a PUP article. I used to go to a PG distribution center on East Carson Street every Wednesday and Saturday night to picket the delivery of the scab print edition. Sometimes, it’s going to a show or getting food with a fellow striker or two, where we inevitably talk about the strike (and sometimes, we vow not to discuss it at all). It’s carrying on and moving forward.
Have you participated in unionizing efforts elsewhere such as the Starbucks employees or Amazon? Why is that important?
I’ve gone to rallies for Starbucks and showed support for their one-day walkouts. I’ve spoken at a rally for the UE strike at Wabtec. It’s all the same fight; these people support us and so we support them. The Starbucks workers have been especially supportive of us, coming to late night pickets outside of the city. They’re amazing people, truly.
The News Guild has a fund accepting donations to help striking employees with survival needs. How can the public contribute?
Donate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers (actionnetwork.org)
I remember a member of the worker welfare committee telling me that a union member needed an emergency furnace early on. It occurs to me that the other trade unions should have been able to address that at cost. Are there other in-kind donations that people can offer? Or the other unions in the region? Surely furnace issues will be a concern again soon.
I did have to get an emergency repair on my furnace in December after the snowstorm. I called someone and was able to be reimbursed through our hardship fund I linked above. I can’t speak to anything about the trade unions offering in-kind work. In fairness, though, we haven’t asked.
I really miss the Post-Gazette. My family has ‘taken’ both of the papers my entire life. My great-grandfather worked in the industry for over 50 years, ending his career at the sports copy desk for the Post-Gazette in the 1950s. Even my 5th great grandfather Kerr, a retired gentleman farmer, sold subscriptions to the The Pittsburgh Post in the 1850s because he believed in the power of the press. And now I’m a blogger. But as much as I value the paper, I value the people who put it together more. But I see this as a pivotal moment for journalism. If the strike ended tomorrow, what would you expect to happen?
I personally would feel relief. But I also know that relief would be the Blocks doing what they should have been doing all along. I would feel grateful to my fellow strikers for their sacrifice but not to the PG itself. The end of the strike will also come with a lot of work, and that work would have to begin pretty shortly. But first, there will be an incredible celebration. The work of returning to the newsroom can start after the hangover has worn off.
In July 2020, the PG illegally declared an impasse to negotiations and imposed terms on the Guild. That included taking us out of our health care plan and placing us on a much worse and more expensive plan of the PG’s parent company, Block Communications Inc. Guild members lost vacation days, union security (meaning they can fire anybody whenever they want as though there was no union), and our health care costs tripled.
Friday marks a one-year commemoration of the strike. What can we expect from the gathering that day? Will it be live streamed?
This PUP story is a great primer on the rally: Read it here. The rally, which I am MC’ing, will be livestreamed. Executive editor Stan Wishnowski has been invited to attend and address the workers he continues to hire scab replacements of.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
,Just this: I’ll never be the same. I’ve been irrevocably changed by the strike, in mostly good ways. But only people who have been on strike like this can understand the ways that it affects and changes you. I’m grateful that I am among such incredible people, and that we can support each other the way that we do. You cannot survive a strike by yourself. Solidarity goes much deeper than you can imagine, until you’re out on the line like this.
Where can my readers find the News Guild and other unions online?
The Pittsburgh Union Progress is an incredible publication, fueled by the striking workers, who are doing everything without pay. It’s a true testament to their love of the craft, and it’s also where we write-up any update to the strike.
You can and should subscribe to get our newsletter right this way.
Readers can follow the PUP on Twitter and Instagram. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, too.
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