Block Communications, Inc. recently announced that they are shuttering the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They claim to have lost $350 million over the last 20 years. But that is not why they are closing down the newspaper.
BCI has chosen to kill the newspaper rather than follow court orders to honor the union contract that they signed and to negotiate a new one. And they told their employees in the most shitty way possible:
Employees were told the paper was closing down “in a pre-recorded video played during an emergency meeting, via Zoom, at which no company representatives spoke live,” according to a statement issued Wednesday by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents Post-Gazette journalists.
It should be noted that not once during multiple bargaining sessions and court hearings did BCI claim they could not pay the workers. That’s notable because had they made that claim, they would have had to open their books to the unions.
“During our negotiations, we had asked them more than once, ‘Are you folks claiming you don’t have the ability to pay?’” Pass said. He said the company’s response was, “‘Oh, no. We are not claiming that.’”
Had Block Communications claimed it could not pay for the union’s demands, the company would have had to open its books to the union.
“They could have settled that contract 10 times over for what they’re spending on lawyers,” Pass said.
In other words, it was vulture capitalism that killed the newspaper. If it wasn’t apparent enough that vulture capitalism is the culprit, just last week, BCI shut down the Pittsburgh City Paper as well.
How are we supposed to trust the corporate media when we can’t even trust the corporations that own the media?
