The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday asked for an injunction to force the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to take back striking workers and return to the bargaining table in a nearly two-year strike that union leaders say is the longest in the city’s history.

The petition for injunction in federal court encourages the Post-Gazette to return to negotiations and immediately rescind “the unilateral changes” it made in 2020 to the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s previous collective bargaining agreement, which ran from 2014 to 2017.

In 2020, the news operation, founded in 1786, slashed wages, increased some employees’ health care insurance costs from $6,000 to $15,000 a year, and eliminated vacation time and sick leave for senior workers, said attorney Joseph Pass, who represents the unions.

The labor board’s petition for injunction next heads to a District Court judge, who can schedule a hearing on whether striking workers are suffering “irreparable harm” and if federal court action could lead to a resolution.

If a judge rules in favor of the union, the Post-Gazette has the right to request a stay from that same judge and possibly appeal to a U.S. Circuit court, according to the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strikers’ online publication.

“The Post-Gazette could’ve settled this at any point, even before the strike, by respecting us as workers,” said Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh member Steve Mellon, 65, of Emsworth, a photographer who joined the newspaper in 1997.

“Our children are watching us, folks,” Mellon added at a press conference that drew a pro-union crowd to the doorstep of the Post-Gazette’s offices on Thursday afternoon. “They’re listening to what we say and how we measure that against what we do.”

There are 29 editorial employees currently on strike, said Zack Tanner, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

A total of 39 Guild-represented workers remain at or returned to the Post-Gazette, Tanner said. Several took jobs at other news outlets or left Pittsburgh to further their careers elsewhere.

Tanner estimates the newspaper has hired up to 27 staffers during the strike, which started in October 2022.

“We think this is not just the longest-running strike in the country, we think it’s the longest strike in Pittsburgh history,” said Tanner, who called the strike “absolutely just and absolutely righteous.”

Post-Gazette management said the labor board’s request for injunction “appears to be contrary” to another decision inked during the ongoing strikes.

“The lawsuit is being reviewed by management but appears to be contrary to a recent NLRB Administrative Law Judge’s decision,” Post-Gazette Marketing Director Allison Latcher wrote in an email to TribLive on Thursday. “The Administrative Law Judge found that the Post-Gazette bargained in good faith over health care.”

Tanner called the newspapers’ “good faith” argument a technical one — he said it’s based on a 2023 administrative law judge ruling that didn’t apply to the newspaper’s journalists.

The Post-Gazette stripped health care from members of its advertising union after the window for that judge’s hearing had closed, Tanner said.

Mellon, Tanner and others on Thursday afternoon moved among a crowd 50 or 60 supporters outside the Post-Gazette’s offices. A press conference on the NLRB action evolved into a forum where strikers shared stories about how they’ve fought through 22 months without a paycheck.

Kitsy Higgins, a Post-Gazette advertising employee on strike, said she’s been helping to host psychic fairs to make ends meet during the strike.

“It’s an adjustment to your finances,” said Higgins, 44, of Pittsburgh. “It’s an adjustment to not work 9 to 5.”

A sea of black T-shirts supporting P-G journalists and the Pittsburgh Union Progress filled the sidewalk at the corner of North Shore Drive and Chuck Noll Way. Strikers nearby sold Union Progress merchandise to fund the strike. A man with an acoustic guitar played union songs.

Not everyone was connected to the Post-Gazette. A Coraopolis man said he came out Thursday to show his support for the strikers.

“Organized labor, they were the folks who brought us the weekend,” said Christopher Strayer, 40, as he held a picket-line sign on his shoulder. “I’ve got to show respect.”

The Post-Gazette said, on its website, that it has “an average paid circulation of more than 83,000.” Print editions are published twice weekly — on Thursdays and Sundays.

Pass, the unions’ attorney, estimates the Post-Gazette has spent $4 million to $10 million, much of it on lawyers, since the strike began.

“They could’ve resolved this for a fraction of that,” he said.

The Post-Gazette labor dispute remains the longest strike in recent memory — especially in Pittsburgh, according to the Communications Workers of America, which represents Post-Gazette strike workers including the mailers, advertising staff, and the Newspaper Guild journalists.

The longest strike in Pittsburgh before this one was the Electrical Workers Strike at Westinghouse Airbrake Co., which lasted 204 days between 1981 and 1982, CWA spokeswoman Moira Bulloch told TribLive.

The longest news industry strike on CWA’s radar lasted 114 days in New York City in 1962 and 1963, she said.

The Post-Gazette strikers, by comparison, hit day 679 on Thursday.

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