The Press: Back to Work

A 47-day strike that shut down all three of Pittsburgh’s dailies ended last week and the papers came out again. For the 400 mailers and delivery drivers, whose strike had forced the publishers to lay off their other 2,400 employees and close up shop, there was a 10¢-an-hour wage boost, with 3½¢ more after nine months. But the question of whether the 2,800 employees of the papers should collect $1,700,000 in back pay, as they demanded, was still up in the air, would have to be settled by arbitration. The Pittsburgh Press, which along with the Post-Gazette and Sun-Telegraph had lost close to $4,000,000 in ad revenue, put into words what everyone felt. Said the Press: “Nobody wins a strike. It’s like a bloody war. Everybody loses.”