Pittsburgh NewsGuild’s Michael Fuoco: Post-Gazette is imposing “every nefarious type of union busting”

by Sean Collins

Editorial Note:

Since the publication of this interview, Michael Fuoco resigned as President of the Pittsburgh News Guild following allegations of misconduct. These allegations were recently reported by the New York Times.

We condemn harassment, abuse, and sexual misconduct in the labor movement in the strongest terms. Our movement and working people deserve better.

We spoke with Michael Fuoco, president of the Pittsburgh NewsGuild, which represents 123 reporters, photographers, and copy editors at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In late 2019, Post-Gazette reporters held a month-long byline strike in response to mistreatment and bad faith bargaining from Post-Gazette executive editor Keith Burris and Block Communications, a family-run company that has owned the Post-Gazette since 1927. After three and a half years of negotiations, Post-Gazette management declared an impasse and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions. The Pittsburgh NewsGuild filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board and held a secret ballot vote on strike authorization.

Yesterday evening, the Pittsburgh NewsGuild announced that an overwhelming number of newsroom employees voted to authorize a strike. Two other CWA union locals at the newspaper, Pittsburgh Typographical Union Local 7 and Mailers Local M-22 unanimously authorized a strike. In our interview with Michael, he explains the strike vote’s background.

Strikewave: We just did a short series on the NewsGuild, interviewing Jon Schleuss where we discussed part of the situation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and right after that it was announced you were voting holding a strike authorization vote. What’s brought you and your coworkers in the newsroom to this point?

Michael Fuoco: We have been negotiating for over three and a half years. Literally, we’ve been negotiating. The other side has not been negotiating. That’s why it’s so incredible that several weeks ago they declared an impasse. We pushed back on that and said we were ready to get back to the table. Despite that, on July 27—and I remember that date because it’s my birthday—they imposed new work conditions on us based on their final proposal to us. It includes every nefarious type of union busting imposition. We filed an unfair labor practice charge because they unlawfully declared an impasse and unlawfully imposed new working conditions. We’re opposing all of that at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) but we know how that goes.

At the same time, our executive committee representing 123 newsroom employees at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette unanimously approved authorization of a strike. We took that to the membership and a secret mail-in ballot vote is underway. Striking is not something we want to do. We will only do it if they leave us no other option. We want to get back to the table. They’ve shown no propensity for three and a half years to negotiate. They’ve bargained in bad faith, we feel their intent all along was to declare an impasse, lawful or not. Even with all that, we still feel there’s a path forward. The Post-Gazette is a 234-year old institution. Given what’s going on in the media landscape in the United States, we want to keep the Post-Gazette publishing for another 234 more years. We owe it to our readers, to our region. We are doing everything we possibly can to settle this without a strike but if they leave us no option, we will strike.

SW: In management’s so-called final offer that they’ve imposed on the newsroom, what are these new conditions and work rules?

MF: They imposed a new healthcare for which we would have to pay 30% of the premium. It’s nowhere near the kind of plan that we have now. They took away our right to grieve and arbitrate disputes. They have eliminated dues checkoff. They basically said we are not guaranteed a 40 hour workweek or an eight hour day, meaning they can basically say, “You’re not working next week.” And because we have no grievance procedure, we could not do anything about it. Basically anything that you could possibly imagine, they have taken away from us.

They’re making a big deal that they’re ‘giving us’ an 8% raise over three years. Well, number one, we haven’t had a raise in 14 years. Number two, since 2006 we have been giving them back 8% of our salary to pay for healthcare. They’re not really giving us anything. This is something we had in our contract in 2006 and they’re not even doing it all at once. It’s not a contract that we would agree to. However, I think there are things that we can agree to. We want to explore that possibility. But, if not, we will go on strike because the imposed conditions are not something any union would work under and I don’t think that my union will.

SW: In the past few years, the acrimony between the newsroom and management has been very public, first with the publisher coming into the newsroom to berate reporters (seemingly while intoxicated), then the byline strike in late 2019, and finally with the recent sidelining of two Black reporters, Alexis Johnson and Michael Santiago. What is the impetus for this decline in relations between the NewsGuild and P-G management?

MF: A change in top editors. The firing or forcing out of mid-level editors. A lack of dignity and respect. There’s no dignity. It’s a toxic environment. To be clear, that’s not why we’re going on strike but it all goes together. Up until five years, there always was mutual respect and working out differences without filing of grievances. In today’s newsroom, we file more grievances in a week then in the past we would file in a year. We would work things out before they became a problem. So while in the past, there was a willingness to look for solutions, now there is an effort to look for problems. They won’t respond to normal union requests for information and if they do, they drag it out for a month. Negotiations never seeped into newsroom management, regardless of how things were going in the negotiating room. That has changed. We are being treated horribly and without the respect and dignity we deserve as journalists.

SW: That seems particularly exemplified in the case of Alexis Johnson, and Michael Santiago, who were sidelined and barred from reporting on Black Lives Matter protests. Michael has since left the P-G and Alexis is suing the paper. In my conversation with TNG-CWA president Jon Schleuss, we talked about issues of diversity in the newsroom—how has this played out for you at the bargaining table?

MF: Well, we haven’t been at the bargaining table since March. What happened then—and this is why we maintain we’re not an impasse—they gave us what they said was their best offer. We responded with a counteroffer. During the last meeting in March, we had gone through only one third of our counteroffer. We set a date to go through the rest of it later that month. Then the pandemic struck, there was a lockdown, and we weren’t able to have that meeting. So the next thing that happens is they declare an impasse. So what happened with Alexis and Michael hasn’t entered the sphere of negotiations. But it has caused a national embarrassment for the Post-Gazette. It started with Alexis but it spread to other members who showed support for her. They had stories pulled. Other people were secretly banned from coverage. They just want that all to go away. It’s still at the top of our agenda. We still want them to apologize to her, remove whatever secret ban there is, and work with us to eliminate the systemic racism that caused this in the first place.

SW: Members of Pittsburgh Mailers Union Local 22/Communications Workers of America Local 14842, which represents the roughly 40 P-G employees in the mailroom, voted to authorize a strike over the weekend. Are they dealing with the same brickwall of resistance from management as well?

MF: I can’t speak for the mailers but my understanding is they voted 28 to 0 to authorize their leadership to call a strike. All of the Post-Gazette unions are negotiating with the same union-busting law firm, King & Ballow from Tennessee. We’re all experiencing the same bad faith bargaining. All the unions have joined in on this ULP bad faith bargaining charge. There are five locals negotiating right now, only one other was imposed upon like us. [Ed. note: Two Teamsters locals represent the newspaper’s pressman and its drivers. Two other CWA locals represent workers in the mailroom and in the Finance and Advertising departments. 10 separate locals represent over 500 workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.] We anticipate they will have new working conditions imposed on them as well. We meet and talk about what’s happening, so that everybody’s in the loop. It shows a solidarity that the company needs to recognize. Again, nobody wants to go on strike, everybody wants to settle this at the bargaining table. We’ll have to wait and see if they are of likemind.

One thing I forgot to mention about what management imposed is layoff out of seniority. The finance unit has eight members. They’ve been imposed upon. Management has already laid off out of seniority with them. Two of the eight have been laid off and they are shipping their work to the sister paper in Toledo. It’s a real thing. It’s not just threats. They are actually doing what they’re imposing.

SW: When I spoke with Jon, in a lot of the newsrooms that have organized across the country, a lot of the reporters’ frustrations are not with their editors but with the conglomerates and hedge funds that bought these local newspapers up. Your newspaper is owned by Block Communications, which is a family affair and has brought in new newsroom editors that are very tyrannical managers. What has changed within the family that brought about this new dynamic?

MF: It’s hard to keep this all straight but a couple years ago, this horrible editorial was written by Keith Burris. It was published in both newspapers (Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade). He worked in Toledo at the time. It was very racist. In the Post-Gazette, it ran on Martin Luther King Jr. Day of all days. It got a lot of pushback from across the country, including members of the Block family who wrote a letter to the editor. Despite the pushback, publisher John Block brought Keith Burris to Pittsburgh to run both editorial departments. A short time after that, they got rid of David Shribman, Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter and our executive editor for 15 years. Keith Burris was installed as the editor. Our managing editor, who also was someone that we could deal with, saw the writing on the wall and she left. Then some of our mid-level editors, as I said, were either fired or forced out. So the whole dynamics of the newsroom changed in a very short space of time, which isn’t normal. Very rarely do you lose an executive editor. Even more rarely do you get a brand new executive editor, a brand new managing editor, and department editors departing and merging of all departments all at the same time. It was a shock to the system for those of us who had been there.

SW: Even though it is still this family-owned newspaper, it is replicating the same practices as the hedge funds and conglomerates trying to squeeze as much blood from the stone as possible and stretch a dollar. It reminds me of what happened in Cleveland, where the Cleveland Plain-Dealer management successfully rid itself of the newsroom union. Is Block Communications trying to replicate that?

MF: It’s death by a thousand cuts. Sadly, I think they’re looking at Cleveland as their model. What’s most shocking to someone like me—I’ve been here for 36 years. In the past, more than back in the 2000s and earlier than that, the publisher of the newspaper was a man who was a saint. He was the uncle of the two people who are running things right now, the twin Blocks. He was a saint. He treated us with respect and dignity. Unfortunately, he has passed away and a new generation has taken over that doesn’t have his values and decency.

I don’t feel that this is an economic problem. I think they own this newspaper as a vanity project. There’s a philosophical thing at work here. Not believing that employees deserve a working wage, not believing that journalists have special talent, they feel anybody can do what we do. They don’t feel a responsibility to the community. We’re owned by Block Communications, which is a cable company, a TV broadcasting company, a radio company, construction company. And they happen to own two newspapers which provided all the money to buy these other things. They make $100 million profit a year, even with us losing money. So I don’t think it has to do with money. I’m not pollyanna, I’ve been around a long time. I’m a realist. I’m a journalist. I can analyze things. I don’t think we’re in a good position but I don’t think all hope is lost. I’m going to continue believing that there is a possibility of a settlement until they absolutely show all of us that they aren’t interested in a settlement.

Sean Collins is a staffer with SEIU Local 200United in Upstate New York and an editor for Strikewave. He also serves as the Treasurer for the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

AdminAugust 11, 2020