Two years ago, workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, represented by five different unions, walked off the job on strike. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with Post Gazette management for SEVEN years—since 2017—and have battled bad-faith bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions, and loss of vacation time and insurance benefits. As of Oct. 18, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike has officially entered its third year, despite the National Labor Relations Board ruling that management has flagrantly broken federal labor law and committed multiple Unfair Labor Practice charges. We speak with a panel of striking workers about how they are faring after two long years on strike and what it will take to secure a victory and return to work. Panelists include: Rick Nowlin, news assistant, editorial writer, and PG archivist Bob Batz Jr., veteran editor, writer, photographer, and Interim Editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress (PUP) Steve Mellon, veteran photographer and writer, and regular PUP contributor John Santa, copy editor, page designer, and sports writer for the PUP Natalie Duleba, page designer, copy editor, web editor, and award-winning PUP contributor Additional Links/Info:The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s half-year strike Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more After months of striking, media workers aren’t backing down A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work Steve Mellon, ‘This has to stop’: Pittsburgh news workers mark 2 years on strike with billboard truck that names names The Pittsburgh Union Progress website Donate to the strike fund here Permanent links below: Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTubechannel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music:Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Max AlvarezPost-Production: Jules Taylor Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Rick Nowlin: My name is Rick Nowlin, my title with the Post News Assistant. I work in new archives. I’ve been an editorial writer and I was also the jazz writer for 20 years. Steve Mellon: I’m Steve Mellon. I’m a photographer and writer at the Post Gazette. I’ve been at the newspaper since 1997. I write for the Pup pretty extensively. As a matter of fact, I’m often torturing Bob. He’s the editor of The Pup and Karen Carlin. I’m often torturing them with stories at 11 o’clock and I take every opportunity, actually, I’ve sent Bob’s stories to two o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning, and I always take every opportunity to profusely apologize for being a night owl. Natalie Duleba: I’m Natalie Duleba. I started working at the Post Gazette early 2020. I’m a page designer and copy editor and a web editor there. My participation at the Union progress has been sporadic, but one of my articles did win a Golden Quill Award, so not a lot, but when I do, it’s a good one. Bob Batz Jr.: Hi, Mel. I’m Bob Batz Jr. I’m a 30 year editor and writer and photographer at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and I got tapped to be the interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, which is our electronic strike paper. John Santa: My name’s John Santa. I’m a copy editor and page designer at the Post Gazette. I’ve only been there about a year, but I’ve been at various publications for about 20 years in the business now, so yeah. Oh, at Pop, most importantly, which I tell people that’s probably going to end up being the thing I’m most proud of in my entire career. But at Pop, I’m a sports writer and like Steve, I am very prone to sending in sports stories from late games at two, three in the morning and probably frustrating Rick Davis, our sports editor to No End. So thank you, Mel. Happy to be here. Mel Buer: I’m so glad everyone’s here. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Working People. I’m your host Mel Buer. Working People is a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to, and please support the work we do with The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. So we’re coming up on a pretty mind-blowing anniversary in the news labor world. Two years ago in October, 2022, after the newspaper unilaterally cut off insurance benefits to production workers and newsroom workers filed ULPs for bad faith bargaining. The workers of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette walked off the job on strike. The newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with the Post Gazette management for seven years since 2017, and have battled bad faith, bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions and loss of vacation time and insurance benefits. In October, 2022, newsroom workers voted to go on strike and strike. They did. Now, two years later, the workers of the Post Gazette are still on strike, and despite the NLRB upholding their unfair labor practice charges against the company, they still have a long way to go to total victory. Today we’ve brought some of the striking workers onto the show to talk about the last two years of the strike, the welcome updates from the NLRB and what’s next for the workers as their battle continues. Before we begin, a small editorial note for me, just as a disclaimer, I am also a dues paying member of the News Guild, CWA local 3 2 0 3 5, and the folks we have on today are my union siblings from the Pittsburgh Local. Now that that’s out of the way, welcome to the show friends. Thank you for Natalie Duleba: Having us. Hi, thanks for having us. Thanks John Santa: Now. Thank you. Happy to be here. Mel Buer: All right, so to start off our conversation, I think it might be prudent to give our listeners an update about the current state of things at this point in the strike. Bob, can you explain the recent NLRB decision from August and what that has meant for the strike and for negotiations? Bob Batz Jr.: Well, we won our case, Mel, you wouldn’t know it to look at us or talk to us, but we won our case. The NLRB board upheld the its administrative law judge decision from January, 2023. These dates are mind blowing to say them even though we’ve led them. So the board said, yeah, our judge was right. The company’s been breaking federal law in lots of different ways, and we want to expand the remedy. We want them to pay more for breaking the law. The problem is, and this is the crux of the problem with our strike, a crux of our strike, the NLRB has no enforcement power, and so the board said we won, and then we were all sitting there like I wanted to break out pots and pans and whiskey shots, and we couldn’t do that because we were still on strike and we were still on strike a month later, more or less. So what we’re waiting for and our siblings in the other CWA unions and in the Pressman’s Union, we are counting on relief from the federal courts through injunctive processes that we don’t fully see what’s going on because it’s this federal agency doing stuff on our behalf. And as we sit here coming up on our actual two year anniversary of US walking, we’re waiting for that relief to come from the courts. Mel Buer: John, if you want to just give me a little, what’s your impression here? This is a common sort of complaint that a lot of folks have about the NLRB is an agency really is that a lot of folks will see these sort of victories with their ULPs being upheld with various sort of small sea consequences being meted out to these corporations and these management teams that are breaking labor law and creating untenable working conditions for their workers. But oftentimes it really does amount to a slap on the wrist, or if the corporation is big enough, the fines don’t do anything. It’s a drop in the bucket for their daily profit, not to say they’re even the millions of dollars that they make year over year. So you have this NLRB victory and you’re still waiting for these sort of consequences to push the management back to the bargaining table to get them to, I don’t know, show shred of humanity for their working employees. How does that make you feel? John Santa: Yeah, it’s obviously incredibly frustrating. I mean, we face ownership or my bosses if you want to call them that publishers in the case of our paper that are unreasonable and even aside from being unreasonable, they’re oftentimes just completely unattached to reality of the situation that they’re dealing with here. And it’s obviously frustrating. You then think about how underfunded the NLRB is, and you see how difficult it is for these decisions to have any real teeth. I mean, I think the number, something like 30%, 27% of union election petitions are up there have been 27% more union election petitions over the past year. That’s just way too much for the NLRB to have to deal with in its current state. I mean, I would have to look at the numbers exactly, but I think it’s like $20 million that the NLRB is underfunded by. I mean, until there’s real change in that regard, it’s hard to believe that there’s ever going to be any meaningful kind of fix for us. So we’re hoping that we can get more support in every way, and especially from politicians and local leaders locally and nationally that could really affect change with the NLRB. Steve Mellon: Mel, if I can cut in here real quick. Mel Buer: Absolutely. Steve Mellon: Our case is a perfect example. We have ruling after ruling that states unequivocally that the Post Gazette has violated federal labor law. There’s no question about the rulings in this and about what the facts of the case are, and yet here we are two years out still on strike. This is the state of labor law in the United States right now. They have money, we don’t, and they have the power of appeals. They have these high price law firms, union busting law firms that can come in and just try to grind us down. I’m amazed that I sit in these morning meetings that we have, and I look around at the number of people like John and Natalie and Bob and Rick who are still with us, who are still fighting these fights. And that’s the one thing that gives me hope is that despite the odds that are against us here, the processes, the underfunding of the NLRB, despite those processes that we are still standing, we’re still here talking to you, we’re still a unified group, we’re still on strike. It’s not easy after two years, we have to check in on each other on a regular basis. We have these discussions about how you’re doing not just financially, but two years without work, without that work identity, without those morning check-ins that you do around the coffee machine. These are, it’s tough. I never thought 40 plus years in this business that I would be on strike in the two minute warning of my career. I’m 65 years old that I would be doing this, but I can tell you that despite all that, I’m so proud to be look and see Natalie and John and Bob and Rick and all those other faces in the morning meetings and know that we’re still in this fight. Mel Buer: I think that’s a good sort of segue into my next question. Rick, you’ve been on strike for the last two years, and I really want to just ask how have folks fared in the last two years? How are you feeling now that you’re coming up on this official anniversary, two year anniversary of walking off the job? What’s the state of the strike fund? How are folks staying positive on the picket line? What’s your sense of that? Rick Nowlin: Well, I think with my situation, it is a little bit hairy because I got married about four years ago and my wife and I bought a house three years ago, and then the strike came even though I thought it was the right thing to do to take a stand, she was obviously quite concerned to say the least. So how are we going to make it, as I said, the process shake out and a big part of the issue that we’re working on is healthcare because I said healthcare being our healthcare being effectively canceled and replaced with another plan, which was way more expensive. One thing that has definitely been the case, in my case with the union picking up healthcare costs because a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and you can imagine how expensive that might be it one going to not just hospitals, but also specialists, but because of that, if there’s a time to be on strike is your time to get prostate cancer, this will be the time to do it. And my wife, we’re very thankful for, if anything, that’s the time it happened. As far as that’s concerned, our income has been cut, but also because unions have been picking up many of our expenses, our expensive has also been cut out. So we’re thankful for that. And on a side note, to keep me from going stir crazy, many of these people know that I’m also a musician and my number of gigs that I’ve had have gone up prescriptions over the last year and a half as well. So in one sense it’s been for me personally, dialysis get to spend a lot of time with my wife that we wouldn’t have otherwise. But we’ve been able to weather the storm quite well because she has some investments that she’s made over the years. And as I said from the beginning, my being on Striker, I’m almost as old as Steve. I’m 63 and my being on strike is being a sympathy with my colleagues here because I’ve always felt that given the situation, as he’s mentioned in labor law that was being violated, that it does affect me in one sense, but I’m here for them. I just suppose it’s the right thing to do for me to go out with them because if they’re being screwed eventually it means that all my gut screwed as well. So it’s one of the things that we’re all in this together. That’s how I look at it. Mel Buer: That’s a very good point to make. And I really hope that your cancer fight is successful and that you do get the rest that you need to be able to heal from that. Rick Nowlin: And I want to say it was caught early enough, so we haven’t had any, I really haven’t had any treatments. I do know I have another biopsy in December, but the thing about it’s, we caught it early enough so that I really haven’t needed anything. The only thing we’ve been doing is just monitoring it. But once again, if I was still active, who knows how much we would’ve paid all these specialists there. And that’s part of the reason why, as I said, being on strike is, at least for me at this point, turned out to be a blessing. Mel Buer: Funny how that works. Right. Natalie, I did want to ask you a question. Natalie Duleba: Sure. Mel Buer: I know, and this is one of the, I think this is the hard question, I suppose. I know that some workers have crossed the picket line and gone back to work. I had a memorable and frankly heated exchange on Twitter with one of those scab workers back in 2023, and still others have been hired on in scab positions in the intervening two years. How have you as a group, as a union handled these strike breakers? Has it hardened resolve among the strikers, people pissed off, I imagine So unfortunately in this US labor movement management will do this every time there is a strike and it is a reality of it, of walking off the job. So how have folks at the Guild taken that in and yeah, what’s your thoughts about that? Natalie Duleba: So I remember that Twitter exchange quite a lot because that was a former striker who had gone back to work across the picket line was, I dunno, for lack of a better word, trying to get clout for supporting the SAG and WGA strikers and talking about, oh, well I’ll look at all this stuff that they had learned and it was just so hypocritical, but that’s not an attitude that is outside of the norm, that kind of hypocrisy that you see from scabs. And I actually lived with a striker, they lived in my house and they took a job at the Post Gazette outside of the bargaining unit, which just in the general of taking a position at the Post Gazette out of literally everything that they could have taken a job for. They’re a very talented writer, young and willing to work hard, and they decided to take an editorial position at the paper during the strike. And it was a super personal betrayal. And that’s what I really think about a lot of people who have continued to work or who went back to work or even took the job. And it’s like, obviously I’m familiar with the kind of tough job market it is out there for journalists. I’ve moved across the country, this is my third cross country move to Pittsburgh chasing a job, better pay, et cetera. But especially people who live here and have an established reputation in Pittsburgh, they can get jobs probably almost anywhere else that needs a person who can put together a fun couple of sentences and knows how to talk to people. And it’s just kind of mind boggling. I’m lucky that I really haven’t had any out in the wild encounters with scabs besides my former roommate. That was really tough. They did move out. They told me they took a job with post the day that they moved out. So it was definitely a shock, but I didn’t have to live with them after that. And the times that I have has just been in professional settings and we’re professional, so if we’re working, we’re going to be polite. And I know that sometimes if we have the mental capacity for it, we have the emotional bandwidth for it. We do try to say like, Hey, why did you take this job? Because a lot of people who have taken, well, a good portion of the people have taken jobs we’re freelancers already for the Post Gazette are known within the writing and photography communities here. And it really felt, it feels like they saw an opportunity to, it was very self-interested to just slide in when the strike is on. When up until that point, they hadn’t been able to be hired during a non-strike situation where great photojournalist like Steve Mellon or Pan Pancheck are on strike and it feels very just self-centered, which is really the core of it. And I know that there’s a lot of, this is hard to say fortunate, but I started working right before the pandemic started, so I only had a couple weeks in the office and I was the nighttime worker, so I didn’t actually know a lot of people. I don’t think I had met Steve Mellon in person until that first day on the picket line. He had just been a name on a screen for me for two years. But we have strikers whose working relationships, friendships of decades are now broken and that’s not something that can be forgotten. And it’s also something that if it’s ever to be, I don’t even know if forgiveness is like an option for folks. I’m not going to talk for anyone else, but that’s forgiveness, that has to be earned by the people who’ve continued to work and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of indication that they want to do that because of the way that they don’t engage with us in good faith. At the beginning of the strike, we made a lot of bids. We called people regularly to hear their stances and I think we all remember just how emotionally draining that was. And some of this is just protecting our own mental health and our own emotional wellbeing to not engage with Strike Bakers or people who scabs who never came out. And I think that’s fine. I agree with that because it is so hard to parse those really intense interpersonal issues and it is going to be a huge uphill battle uphill negotiation when we’re back in the newsroom because I think that unfortunately it’s going to be us who has to be the bigger person when we’re 100% like the wrong party. Here we’re the people who some of us begged scabs to come out, begged them to not go back in and especially who came back in knowing the resources that we had already offered them that they just kind of spat on. And that’s going to be a really hard thing to work alongside knowing that they’re literally that they put their paychecks over supporting us and supporting themselves. Steve Mellon: That’s very well put, Natalie, and I appreciate hearing that. I’ve been around for a minute and some of these relationships that I have with some of the scab workers, I mean those go back decades. I’ve watched some of these people’s kids grow up and so it’s like a deeply personal betrayal in some sense. And I don’t know what those relationships are going to look like going forward once the strike is over. I don’t know. That’s just territory that we will have to navigate. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about that right now. It’s pretty easy for me. I bumped into one of the new scab hires a couple of weeks ago at an assignment and for somebody like that, I didn’t know who he was. He came up and introduced me and I just told him, look, dude, I’m not having a conversation with you right now. That’s pretty easy for me to do. I don’t know this person and I, he’s a human being, so I care about him on that level, but I’m not going to waste any brain cells on it. But some of these other relationships striking, you have a binary choice. You can either stand with your workers or you can stand with your employer. In our case, an employer that has been violating labor law. So if I break the law, if I go down and steal a toothbrush from the target store, my ass is going to end up in the back of a cop car and I’m going to go to jail. But if you’ve got money and you own a company, you can violate labor law. Go live at your main mansion, fly your airplane around, flash your fancy watch to your good buddies in New York City and live your happy life. So this whole thing with scabs, I used to, when we first started, I was calling some people who had crossed the picket line just to keep the lines of communication. I thought this would last three or four weeks. I didn’t know it was going to last for two years. One of the issues I had is that I would call and just say, Hey, how are you doing? I’m just checking in and seeing how you’re doing. We can really use you out here on the line. And those weren’t successful conversations. Quite often it would be a litany of complaints about the union and about how I was hurting them, how I was making their job so much harder. And to your point, Natalie, I couldn’t have those conversations anymore because I was talking to strikers who were really struggling. That initial shock of going out on strike, I mean it’s hard to describe, to put into words what kind of a jolt that is to your life. It affects not only your paycheck but your sense of identity. There’s so many unknowns, like Rick said, so many unknowns, things you have to work through. And we were dealing with all that and then I would call people who were very comfortable in there getting a paycheck, very little in their lives had changed. The only thing that really had changed is that they might have somebody saying, Hey, isn’t there a strike going on there? Did you cross the picket line? Maybe somebody would call them a scab and they would become deeply offended. I just quite honestly didn’t have patience for that, so I stopped making those phone calls. Mel Buer: I think that’s a good point there Steve and John, I’d love to get your thoughts on this as well. I going out on strike, I think a lot of folks, particularly younger folks ostensibly on the left, these activists and organizers who maybe don’t have the benefit of union experience will get very excited when strikes happen understandably, because this is a monumental collective sort of action that happens where workers come together and say, we’re doing the thing that is going to have the most impact and that’s withholding our labor in service of better working conditions in our workplace. It’s a very uniquely empowering experience, but it is also a very difficult decision to make and I think it’s important to draw attention to that. And I wonder what your thoughts are, John, about what it means to go out on strike and also to maintain withholding your labor for two years. Incredible. John Santa: Yeah. Sincerely, there is not an aspect of my life that hasn’t been affected by this strike. I’ve friendships, family, money, struggles. I think it was Steve said, you lose your identity from a career that you’re very passionate about. I mean, let’s face it, no one gets into journalism to get rich. You do it because you believe in it. You believe in making an impact on your community. It’s hard. There’s no doubt about it that it’s hard. In terms of my personal story with going out on strike, I come from the very stereotypical Pittsburgh background. Like my dad lost his job at the mill in at the Westinghouse mill in the eighties when it closed. I come from grandfathers on both sides that were union workers. I have a grandfather that was a laborer. I have a grandfather that worked in a union rail yard. He did maintenance on the locomotives for years. So it was never a question I was coming out. And then you look at people like Bob Bats and Steve and Rick and Nolan and Natalie and Ed Bz mean I could name everyone that we’re on strike with and you know that these people are all on the right side of history and you want to be with them. I want to forever have my name mentioned with I stood shoulder to shoulder with Steve Mellon. I mean, I can’t imagine it being any other way. So there’s that, and you look at the people that are scabs and I think a lot of the scabs that are most responsible for keeping this going, I mean obviously the reason that the strike is still ongoing is because the Bloc family is unwilling to end this strike. They can do this, they could have done this at any point. They won’t do it. They want to make a point here and we’re not going to let that happen. If you look at some of our scabs, our worst scab offenders if you will, it’s the sports department. It’s guys like Jerry Lac who are cornerstone parts of this newspaper. They walk into that Steeler locker room, which Jerry walks in there to a Steeler locker room that is unionized by the way, and talks to these guys and makes it seem to the public, as I’m wearing my Steeler hat, makes it seem to the public that it’s business as usual. It’s not, and it’s just whenever at the end of the day you get down to it, whose side do you want to be on? Want to be on the side of the owners of this newspaper who have time and time again for seven years, as you referenced at the top of the podcast, broken federal labor law. That’s not the type of person I want to be with. I want to be with Bob Batz, the interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. It’s an honor to stand with Bob Batz, an honor to stand with Natalie. And that’s what keeps me going because like I said, there’s no part of this that’s been easy. It’s been hard every day, every minute, every hour that we’ve been out on strike. And it’s that going back and forth between being, man, I’m fucking struggling and man, this is a fucking honor. I’m sorry for cursing. I don’t know if that’s allowed, but Mel Buer: Totally fine. John Santa: That’s just, that’s the truth of the matter, and that’s the way I feel. Mel Buer: That’s the power of solidarity. There’s nothing quite like it, frankly. Rick Nowlin: Yeah, and I want to take off on that too because as I’ve met, this is not my first strike. I was with Giant Eagle, which is the region’s largest grocery chain in 1991. As we went out for contract reasons, and I also do have some of the labor background, my mother was a teacher mostly in Wilkinsburg schools. That’s where she spent her career. And when we went out, we contemplated going out. I asked her for her advice, she gave me one piece. She said, don’t cross picket line, and that’s all I need to hear because frankly, I saw the proposals that the company was offering us back then, and my first reaction is they’re not going to accept this and they didn’t. So we went on for six weeks. One thing that helped us, I will say is that the customer’s boycotting. So yeah, this is not my first go around with stripes, but I do believe, and John mentioned to you is that we’re doing the right thing. Standing up for what I believe is justice. We’ve been doing it for two years is hard, but if when we go back to the newsroom, and I’ve said this in our Zoom meetings a number of times, we’re going to own it because we’ll be going to be tough. We’re going to be tried and tested once we go back in the newsroom. I can’t say how, of course, when is it going to happen, but we’re going to be the leaders in the newsroom when we go back because we’ve been through the ringer, we’ve been through the fire, we know what it’s like. We’ve been through the struggle. And the struggle is what makes us who we are. Mel Buer: Well said, well said. I think a lot about despite maybe because of these betrayals by these strike breakers, when you get back into the newsroom after victory, I think it’ll be maybe gratifying to know that this victory was one for them as well, despite their, I dunno how to put this nicely, inability to maintain their own piece of the picket line. They will still benefit, right? And I think that in itself is also a really good piece to kind of keep in the back of your mind as you’re out there on the picket line. It sucks that they’re not there, but you’re still fighting for them too and hopefully they appreciate that when they see the benefits that end up in their contract when you are finished negotiating this round, Rick Nowlin: And that’s the attack that many of us who have actually spoken with the strike breakers to Theca have gone back in, have been trying to come across. We’re not doing this simply for us. You’re going to benefit from us too. Mel Buer: Right? A hundred percent. Bob, I’d like to take a little bit of a sideways jump here. We’ve talked a little bit about the Pittsburgh Union progress, the strike paper that you’ve put together collectively since you’ve walked out in the last two years. I really personally would like to say that I think it’s one of the best strike papers in labor’s recent history. There is a long and storied history of American strike papers and what those do, it’s not just strike papers written by Newspapermen who’ve gone out. These are ways to communicate among striking workers, particularly for long haul strikes. And at some point, hopefully I’ll be able to do a couple part episode with working people about the history of strike papers because it is so cool and it’s like it hits the right nerd space in my brain about it. But I really want to, I’m going to start with you Bob, but I would also like to open this up to anyone else who has thoughts. What has it been like contributing to this paper the last two years? What are some of the things that you’ve learned in the course of publishing it? Has it changed the way you think about journalism? And I know that in terms of solidarity, there have been individuals in the community both in positions of power and just community members who have chosen to speak only to PUP and not speak to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. And so I want to get your thoughts about that. A lot of questions there, but pick and choose what you’d like. Bob Batz Jr.: All right, and I’ll be quick and I can turn it over to these guys. They’re all part of this too. I mean, we went on strike on October 18th and we had our first edition of Pup published on October 20th. We were the first strike paper of the digital age, whatever the hell that means. But we didn’t have to worry about printing it and sending it out, and we knew we were going to withhold our labor, but we didn’t want to withhold what we do because we still wanted to do what we do. It mattered to us. We wanted to write about things that mattered to us. We wanted to write about things that our community cared about, so that’s separate from the labor issue with our bad bosses. And so that’s what we did. And we never tried to be a replacement for the Post Gazette, the big daily metro. We didn’t have the bodies for that even at the start. As Steve said, there’s a lot to unpack the first weeks and months of being on strike where you don’t know where your healthcare is going to come from and you don’t know there’s a lot of other work to be done, but we got off to a good strong start and we’ve never looked back. And I think I would say, and this Steve and I have deep talks about this all the time. We have from the beginning set out to do just journalism. That’s what we did when we got paid for it, and that’s what we do for free and it’s straight up the kind of stuff we do could run in any good journalistic publication, but we have found our sweet spot reaching out to communities that are overlooked or other people that are struggling. We sort of have a new empathy certainly for labor issues, and our strike has coincided with a lot of other people going through these struggles as well. So we found sort of a new mission in reaching out to some of these other communities and individuals and neighborhoods and movements. And one of Steve’s stories is one of the things that I think we’re all proudest of is his ongoing coverage of East Palestinian, Ohio and after the trendy realm there. And that’s something that’s what we want to do. That’s the pure stuff that we do. We do all kinds of other stuff. Natalie had a great story about L-G-B-T-Q bar in a neighborhood that doesn’t get a lot of coverage. Sometime Johnny Santa goes out on Friday night to football games with other grandkids and great grandkids with mill workers. That’s what we do and those are things that are all important to us. So I don’t know what to say. I’m happy for it to go out of business in a lot of ways because these people, Johnny San is going to work all Friday night and he’s going to work all day Saturday on college football and he doesn’t get paid. The Honor is mine to a work with him and with Steve and to do this work because that’s always mattered to me, but we want to get paid for doing this, so that’s the part that we have to finish up and get back to getting a paycheck is nice. A last word on being an unpaid journalist, though I keep saying this, it’s like journalism drugs. You’re not beholden to a boss, you’re not beholden to a company, you’re not beholden to a founder or a foundation. It’s just not something that you can do for two years when you’re not getting paid. So I hope we can keep doing what we do maybe with a little bit of strike flavor on it, but I would like to get paid for it as well and get benefits. Mel Buer: I will say before I pass it along, I worked as sort of part-time independent. I say I was in grad school at the time, but I was also working as an independent journalist and not getting paid for it because working as a freelancer is a godawful profession and I never want to do it again. And I commend to the people who sell their stories and their photos piecemeal and try to strong arm these publications into paying them a decent rate. I was not very good at it, but I will say that didn’t stop me from doing the work. There’s something unique about having some skills that maybe other folks in the community don’t have access to, and being able to tell a cogent story about a beautiful thing that’s happening to the humans around you and to have them trust you with that is extremely, it’s a privilege and I think about it a lot in the context of the strike paper and of strike papers in general. It is a labor of love. No one’s getting paid for it, especially not in the digital era where you can pay five bucks to host a website for three months or what have you. And I think it’s an important thing to kind of point out is that you’re doing this voluntarily because you have the skills and you care about the community that you’re covering, and that translates as well to the work that you do at the Post Gazette when you’re getting paid for it. It’s the same thoughts, it’s just nice to have a paycheck and I will be the first to tell you that I really do appreciate being a union journalist and having a contract that guarantees a living wage. It’s very, very nice and I hope that you can get back to that soon. I will pass it along. I just wanted to offer my thoughts about it. Natalie, you were about to speak. Natalie Duleba: Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to toot my small little popcorn horn here because Steve and John and Bob have contributed infinitely more than I have, but Bob saying that it’s kind of like we get to decide what we cover and the stuff that I have done has been just things that I thought were cool. I did the Polar plunge into one of our rivers here on New Year’s Day, two years in a row. I’m hoping it’s not going to be three for the Pup, but that was something that I saw and I wanted to do, and I was like, Hey, is it okay? I’m not even sure if I told Bob beforehand that I was going to write about it. I was just like, Hey, I did this thing. Here’s photos and a story. And I talk to people and I’m sure that we all know that New Year’s Day is sometimes a slower Newsday. Maybe there was some gratitude there to have something to run, or the story that I wrote about, it’s a they bar instead of a gay or a lesbian bar. I just thought it was a cool place and I told Bob I was working on a secret story, I would get it to him and he was like, cool, just turn it in. And knowing that we’re shaping it ourselves, I know that it’ll be an adjustment to have to listen to these managers and editors that haven’t advocated for us at all or in any meaningful way. I think that one of our strikers was in contact with a quote manager who doesn’t manage anybody, and that will have to go back to working with them and listening to their directives and that’ll be an adjustment, but we all know now what it can really feel like when it’s a truly collaborative, supportive environment that is journalists driven and story driven, not just, oh, we have to hit these bases. We have to talk about this because it’s important to Pittsburgh, which is, I guess it’s kind of that weird determination of the paper determining what’s important to Pittsburgh instead of Pittsburgh community determining what’s important to itself. And I think that we’ve done a really amazing job with that, with having it be community led and story led and journalist passion led instead of, I don’t know, being the record of paper. I mean the paper of record. Steve Mellon: That’s a good point, Natalie, and one of the things that’s been interesting to me to write for the strike paper is that it’s not only unburdening ourselves from the institution of the Post Gazette and all the being supported by a big newspaper has the advantages of you have resources and you have a built-in readership. It also comes with some weight, and that’s not always beneficial to your work as a journalist. I remember in 2020 during the George Floyd protest, the publishers, the editors of the paper made some really stupid decisions and you can Google that and figure that for yourself, but what that did is that it signaled to the community where the newspaper stood on these issues, and I was going out to cover some of these protests a number of times and people, I’ve covered these communities for years and people that I know were coming up to me and saying, Steve, we don’t want you here. And I’d say, look where I’m coming from. You know how I write and how I cover these things. And I was told, it doesn’t matter. You’re working for the man. And those same people, those same people now are calling me. I think they recognize and appreciate that we have taken that have made a sacrifice to help not just ourselves, but for our colleagues and for the community that Pittsburgh will not benefit from a newspaper that treats its workers like shit and becomes a piece of garbage that’s not a benefit to the community and people, we tell people that they understand that and I think they appreciate that. The conversations I have with people are different now because I think they’re more trusting from the communities that I’m interested in covering. I like Bob says, I spent a lot of time in East Palestine and I was treated there the first several weeks I was up there to write to cover things. I was treated as every other journalist. There were a certain number of journalists up there. I think once people, I didn’t talk about who I was or why I was up there. I was just Steve Mellon from the Pittsburgh Union Progress, and once people figure out that this was part of a strike effort, that we weren’t getting paid for it, that we were publishing the strike paper because we realized that there were stories that needed to be told that weren’t being told or that were being told from a corporate standpoint, they were being shaped by editors who sent maybe naive reporters who hadn’t spent enough time in the community to kind of figure out what was what, and that there was a realization that we were in this for the right purpose. I don’t want to sound self-righteous here, but I’m going to claim that mantle because you go on strike and you don’t like the paycheck and you do these stories, you work your ass off to cover these things, you put up a bunch of shit. It’s because we believe in this and we have a lot of people who have taken the strike pledge. One thing I want to mention is that we’ve all stuck together and there’s a lot of solidarity in our group and people have spoke very ELO about that today, but we’ve also had a lot of support out in the community, and it’s the people that we’ve talked to that supported us that have come to us with stories. I never come up with a story idea anymore. We have so many story ideas coming into us that we don’t have time to fit around and think about what’s a good story. But we’ve had support too from, and everybody here, but maybe you, Mel, will recognize the name of Ali Batt and she is a member. She works for the United Steelworkers, but she has helped us raise money. They’re always out helping message us. This is a labor town, and we’ve been able to do this for two years because we’ve had each other to lean on, but we’ve also had members of this community that have stepped up to us when we’ve really needed it and backed us both financially and with just providing good vibes to us. John Santa: Yeah, I should say with the pop specifically, it’s sort of like a buzzword these days, but local journalism really gets thrown around a lot. Pop is living proof that local journalism really matters and how important it is not just tooting Steve Mellon’s horn because I’m in awe of him and he’s sitting in front of me. There’s no better coverage of East Palestine, not the New York Times, not the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It’s the best there is. I mean, Google it and look, it’s astounding. I mean, Natalie was being gracious, but her story about Harold’s Haunt, I mean, that’s vital to our community. That’s a safe space. That’s a fun place for people. These are important stories that we’re not going to get to read otherwise wise. Being a member of the sports team at the put, we are very intentional every day about telling local stories. It’s not about what the Steelers are doing. The scab column this at the Post Gazette, Jason Mackey can go off and have fun covering the pirates and sealers, and we really know that that’s what he’s about. It’s about the experience for him, not about the experience for the readers. Bob Bats instills that in us every day, how critical that is. We follow that example. That’s really the feedback I hear most about the Pup is this is truly, you truly are focused on what’s happening locally, and I think that’s the greatest Laura we can get from this. I mean, we care about this community. We love this community. We are this community. We’re not taking advantage of it, and that’s what makes me really proud. Seriously, go look at Steve’s Z policy and coverage. It is astounding. Mel Buer: Rick, did you have any thoughts about the union progress and about being a part of this incredible strike paper? Rick Nowlin: Well, I have not written for at all. So because Bob Batz Jr.: Yeah, Rick, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’ll catch you after this podcast. Mel Buer: There you go. Get a chance to kind of join in and enjoy the progress. As a sort of final thought before we head into this last question about what our audience, my audience can do to help support the strike is I’m in awe of the work that you do every day, and I feel very proud to be a member of the same union that is keeping the strike going. And I just want to say that in terms of the strike paper, it really is an example of what happens when community members come together to collectively create something important and impactful for the community that you live in. And it says a lot about the future of journalism that this is the kind of space where folks can really feel like they’re actually connecting to the community. And hopefully you can bring that collaborative spirit back into the newsroom when you’re done with the strike and maybe cajole a couple more editors into taking stories that actually people actually give a shit about. And hopefully that will also mean that these community members who maybe have a soured relationship with the post cassette can maybe rebuild some trust with these individuals who did such a good job with Union Progress with Pup, when this is all said and done and over, that would be the hope, right? That’s the optimistic sort of space. Okay, so this is an open question, anyone who would like to talk about this, but what can my listeners do to help you as you head into the, oh my God, third year of your strike? It could be financially, it could be locals or folks who live within driving distance of Pittsburgh. What are some things that folks can do to kind of keep you in mind and keep you going? Natalie Duleba: Well, I mean this is going to be, we do still have a Stryker fund. You can donate that if as a one-time donor or as recurring donor, that money in terms of giving money that will go one-to-one to support people. That fund helps people pay their bills. It’s not just it’s going to disappear into a PR machine or anything like that. That is money that goes into our pockets when we need it. And you can get all this at union progress.com/donate. You can also subscribe to the union progress. That’s always really great to have a lot of eyes and supporters for our work. It shows the Post Gazette that these are stories that the community wants and that people wanted to read and that they should want us back in the newsroom writing their stories. And also, if you sign the Strike Solidarity Pledge, you’ll get on the email list that anytime you have an action, you’ll get an email. All of this is kind of all going to be clustered into on the union progress.com website. There’s a whole section to donate, subscribe, sign the Strike Solidarity Pledge, which is putting your name committing to support us and not to talk to the Post Gazette. And that way you can get on our mailing list when we have rallies, if you are within driving distance or local or feel like flying into Pittsburgh. And it’s a cool town, and we’ll show you a good time if you come. And when we have actions, we always are pretty active on our social medias, so engagement with that retweets, posting to your stories, things like that are helpful and can be done just from your phone. All of this I just said, you can all do just from your phone and just continue to support union labor in general. We’re not the only strike that is there’s probably another strike happening right now. We saw the power of the Shoreman Strike strike recently that if we could put the fear of God into the Post Gazette the way that they did to the nation, that’d be great. And even though we’ve been in for this long, we’re still so proud and in awe of every other newspaper newsroom who go out on strike. We’re happy that their strikes are so much shorter than ours, but it still takes, we know the bravery in the sacrifice it takes to walk out even for a single day. So yeah, that’s my little spiel here. Anybody else have anything? Bob Batz Jr.: Mel? One thing I’ll say is, and we appreciate labor journalism and more than we ever would’ve before, so we appreciate you. We are glad that you and Max and other people don’t just forget about us because there’s just something about that if you’re doing it and people don’t even know you’re on strike. But one of the things I see going forward is we need more journalism about what it means to go on strike, why you don’t cross a picket line. What is the NLRB and how does it work? How should it work? A lot of the problems that we’re dealing with are just, we know that the Post Gazette is hiring people while we’re out that don’t even know what that means. Or maybe they’re not even being told there’s a strike, but there’s a lot of just education that has to happen. And I think people like you and Max, we’re doing our part now, but we need to just continue to keep that word out there about how this stuff works and doesn’t work and how it should work. And that might help people down the road. I don’t wish any of the scabs, well that I feel like I’m fighting right now, but it’s easier for me to look ahead to some of the young college kids that we’re working with, had interns and we have writers, and I want to have a post Gazette that works for all my colleagues and for myself working there. But what I really want is for it to be a place that a real journalist of the future could work and have, do really good work and work that really matters, and also not have to work three jobs and not have any healthcare. But I think that the kind of work that you do can help make strikes shorter and maybe not happening as often in the future. That would be my hope. Mel Buer: Well, that’s kind of part of the mission that I have here as a co-host working people, is to really kind of draw back the curtain on union organizing and the contemporary sort of US labor movement and what that means to be a part of a union and what that looks like from election to bargaining, to contract to strike to. So hopefully in the future there is more of that chance for us to have these conversations. And I leave the door open for you, the experts on a long haul strike to come back and talk about what it means to be on strike for as long as you have, and especially after victory. You’re going to come back on and we’re going to celebrate. It’s going to happen. And yeah. Any final thoughts before I close it out, or is this a great way to end it? Thank you so much, all Thank you so much. So much. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing your experience and for talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what it means to be on strike. And as always, I want to thank you, my listeners for listening, and thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons. And please go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so that you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel Buer and with much love and solidarity, I’ll see you next time.