Capitalism, Race and Democracy - Tuesday, June 2, 2026

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1. Definitely Dead Band on Facebook.
2. So gather your beautiful people, follow the dancing lights,
3. and let the music carry you into the stars.
4. You're listening to Fiercely Independent KPFK,
5. 90.7 FM Los Angeles and on the web at kpfk.org.
6. This week on Capitalism, Race and Democracy.
7. We won the strike.
8. Like, we won the strike.
9. But owners with a lot of money can say, no, you didn't.
10. We're just going to close the paper.
11. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Newsfield striker, Steve Mellon,
12. on the lessons of their three-year-long strike
13. and the fight for a newspaper in Pittsburgh.
14. We knew right away
15. Sean O'Brien is not fighting for $25 an hour
16. No, he wasn't fighting for part-timers
17. Rank-and-file teamsters talk about the contract battle
18. That put them at odds with union leadership
19. From Pacifica Radio, this is Capitalism, Race, and Democracy
20. A collective effort by producers from Pacifica stations
21. And affiliates across the U.S.
22. I'm your host, Thomas O'Rourke
23. Members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh just ended their strike over unfair labor practices
24. at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after 1,132 days. They had won one court battle after another
25. until the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. The paper's owners then announced that they would be
26. shutting it down and turning it over to a non-profit, which promptly terminated most of
27. the workers. Now the workers and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh have decided to launch a new
28. worker community-owned newspaper. Pacificus Steve Zeltser interviewed labor journalist Steve Mellon,
29. one of the workers who had been on strike, about what's to come. We went on strike on October 18,
30. in 2022. And it's a ULP strike. So we charged the Post-Gazette with violating federal labor law.
31. What they did is that they just ripped up our contract in 2020 and imposed their own working
32. conditions, which is a clear violation. So we wrestled with this for a while. And they hired
33. a notorious union-busting law firm out of Nashville, Tennessee, the King and Balloon
34. Law Firm. Look it up. That's what they do. So we tried to work with the company to come to
35. some type of agreement. That did not work. We, after they took healthcare from a number of workers
36. in October, I think it was September of 2022, that was enough for us. And so we went out on
37. strike on October 18th. The strike lasted, you know, we won just virtually every step of the
38. way, Steve. And this is a problem with labor law in this country is that, you know, our case is
39. pretty cut and dry. The company violated federal labor law. It was plain as day. We had the
40. documents. We had the receipts. It took us three years to get a court to agree. We won at the
41. regional NLRB level. We won at the national level of the NLRB. The national NLRB board
42. voted overwhelmingly in our favor and added punishments onto what the regional NLRB had
43. imposed Of course the Post Gazette appealed that in the courts We won everywhere in the courts back in November of 2025 just about six or seven months ago The Third Circuit Federal Appeals Court here in Philadelphia
44. ruled in our favor. And at that moment, we went back to work. The Post-Gazette owners appealed
45. a health care injunction we had. They had illegally taken health care away from us.
46. We won that. We won an injunction that they had to return health care to us, to the workers of the Post-Gazette.
47. The owners appealed that they asked for a stay from the Supreme Court.
48. And on January 7th, if you can believe this, Judge Samuel Alito, of all people, denied the stay.
49. The law breaking was too much for Judge Samuel Alito.
50. So that day I was on a job, Steve, with a friend of mine, another striking worker.
51. We had just gone back to work. We've been back to work for what, a month and a half.
52. So we got a news alert that the Supreme Court had denied the Post Gazette stay.
53. And we like we're like fist bumping each other on this job. We were working.
54. So we got back to work. And about 45 minutes later, we got a note from the company that said mandatory all staff meeting in 45 minutes.
55. So we were like, oh, crap, we got to hop out of here and go get on this Zoom meeting.
56. Well, Steve, in that Zoom meeting, you know, we're all spread out all over the place now because it's the middle of the day and all of us journalists are out working.
57. Right. So we get this message from the company on Zoom.
58. It is a recorded two minute video telling us that the company is closing and we're all going to be losing our jobs at the beginning of May.
59. And then the meeting was done. Nobody, nobody got up and said, I'm sure you guys have a lot of questions here.
60. I'm sure we will answer questions if you have concerns. There was none of that.
61. The call just hung up. And Steve, I'm thinking about all my colleagues who are out in the field.
62. You know, I'm 66 years old, Steve. I've been I've been around for a minute.
63. I've been through this before. It's not my first newspaper closure.
64. But I was worried about my younger colleagues who who had bills to pay.
65. College loan payments had kids to take care of. Some some of my colleagues had kids in college.
66. I was thinking what's going through their minds right now.
67. You know, these are folks who've been on strike for three years.
68. So they had they and they finally got back to work. They had they finally were able to pay some bills.
69. And all of a sudden they're told by their employer that had violated federal labor law that they were losing their jobs in six months.
70. So it's four months at that point. So we had meetings that night to try to come up with alternatives.
71. You know, one of the things we learned during the strike, Steve, three years is a long time to strike.
72. And we had moments that were where we were really down and we had moments where we thought things were going really well for us.
73. But one thing we learned is that we just never stop pushing and never, never give up.
74. Always look for what's what's your next step.
75. So within a week, we had decided that we were going to pursue our own publication.
76. So we formed an organization called Paper.
77. It's Pittsburgh Alliance for People Empowered Reporting.
78. And the idea was to form a cooperative news organization in Pittsburgh.
79. And so we've been there's been a lot happening, Steve.
80. The last week was the last week for many of us at the Post-Gazette.
81. An organization called the Venetulis Institute stepped up to buy the paper.
82. So it was not closed. The Venetulis Institute owns a newspaper called the Pittsburgh Banner.
83. You know, in the end, there were 25, 26 of us on strike in the end.
84. And the new owners interviewed everybody at the paper but they hired only five of the former strikers The overwhelming majority of the people that they hired at this new paper at the new version of
85. the Post-Gazette, were people who had been scabbing for more than three years. So they also kept in
86. place the entire management team that had been running the Post-Gazette into the beach the last
87. couple of years. It's basically the same newspaper, only they have figured out a way to
88. get rid of most of the people who were holding the previous owners to account. So, you know,
89. we're continuing to fight, Steve, and it's indicative of what's happening today to working
90. people is that nothing comes easy. You have to fight against people who have a lot of resources
91. and a lot of money, and they will do whatever they can to try to keep your voice down.
92. But we're not done. We're still fighting.
93. And before this nonprofit took over, the union with community supporters
94. had some meetings around the idea of setting up a collectively owned,
95. community owned newspaper.
96. And why don't you talk about that initiative and why you decided to do that?
97. And of course, newspapers are being shut down around the country.
98. there's a loss of community news there's a loss of reporting in communities the monopolization
99. the media means stories are not being covered that should be covered like east palestine
100. in right right well you know steve that's a great point because one of the things that
101. that really bothered us is that you know we just we looked around at the newspaper landscape and
102. the media landscape it's not just newspapers it's tv stations it's cbs news which you know
103. thanks to the ellison family you know it's uh they're taking over and i mean that's taking a
104. right. Don't be fair about covering things. Yeah. But, you know, what really bothered us is that,
105. you know, we looked around and all the organizations, all the companies that are
106. buying newspapers, you know, the potential buyers for the Post-Gazette were hedge funds.
107. They were mutual funds. They were private equity, private equity money and a handful of nonprofits
108. that were stepping up to buy newspapers. These are individuals and organizations with a whole
109. lot of money. And, you know, I remember when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, you know,
110. everybody thought, oh, it's great. Bezos had a reputation of being fairly liberal. He seemed to
111. be committed to this. And, you know, you see what happens when people with a lot of like the people
112. with money that we have run into who own who own news organizations, they're interested in running
113. a news organization until they're not until it's not in their best interest. Now, the hedge funds
114. are going to go in and buy newspapers and strip. It's an asset sale. They're going to strip it of
115. all of its assets and they're going to keep it on life support, barely able to function until it is
116. no longer worth anything. And then they'll sell off the bones. That leaves workers with very little
117. control. You know, Steve, we won the strike, like we won the strike, but, but owners with a lot of
118. money can say, no, you didn't. We're just going to close the paper. So you have a paper victory only.
119. And, you know, the new owners come in, they're a nonprofit. They got a fairly good reputation,
120. Steve, but they got a lot of money and they're connected to institutions that are more accountable
121. to the moneyed interest than they are to the workers. Right. So so that's what we saw happen.
122. You know, they came in. This new company made a made a lot of noise about, oh, we're going to
123. respect the union. I think the statement was, if the workers want a union, we will have a union at
124. the paper. Well, what did they do? They hired 80 percent of the people in that news. More than that,
125. Like almost all the people in that newsroom now are people who have been scabbing during a strike.
126. Do you think they're going to support a union?
127. The five people who are left who were active in the strike there are five people who are going to be active in organizing a union They going to be overwhelmed I tell you what those five people Steve are really strong fighters
128. They got a lot of supportive people who were not hired like me.
129. But it's going to be a tough fight against, you know,
130. a newsroom that has announced publicly that they want to dissolve the union.
131. So to get back to, so that's a long way, Steve, of saying,
132. The issue was workers had no control over the publication.
133. And if workers don't have any control, the community has no control.
134. So we had several discussions.
135. What we did, Steve, is that we knew we couldn't do this alone.
136. We were able to strike for three years, and we were successful because we had a lot of community support within Pittsburgh and across the country.
137. And labor.
138. I know that you went to the CWA convention a couple of times, national convention.
139. Tremendous support there.
140. Solidarity.
141. hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised. I mean, tremendous sympathy of CW members
142. around the country that your fight had to be supported. And the CWA took it up nationally,
143. actually. Yeah, CWA was great. I mean, yeah, we couldn't have done it without, we could not,
144. we would not have survived without the infusion of CWA help at critical times during the strike.
145. So they really stepped up. And we're going to lean into that again, Steve, because
146. one thing we found in the, what we did is we invited several community stakeholders to a
147. couple of Zoom meetings to figure out what were the next steps forward. What do people in the
148. community, these are people who are actively organizing in the community. We asked them,
149. what do you want to see in a news organization? How can we build that organization? And it was
150. overwhelming, Steve. They wanted a worker and community-owned cooperative news organization
151. with a board. We could buy a membership. And people don't, I heard, I was at a journalism
152. conference about two weeks ago, Steve, I was asked to be on a panel discussion and everybody up there
153. was talking about, oh, we need better engagement with the readers. We need better engagement. And I
154. said, folks, stop with the bullshit. What we know is that people want, they want to be stakeholders
155. in something. They don't want you to engage them. This is not a marketing problem. This is a problem
156. that wealthy people come in and buy newspapers. They don't care about the community. They don't
157. care about getting reporters, knocking on doors, learning what the concerns of the working class
158. people in the community are, and they're reporting on those. They don't care about that. They're more
159. than willing to hire a skeleton staff so they can have somebody go transcribe the meetings at
160. City County, go transcribe what's going on in the courts, and do a bunch of business PR stories.
161. That's what major media now is doing. There's been a lot happening, Steve. We just, to that end,
162. we held a town hall about a month and a half ago, early in April. We had a town hall out in the east
163. end of the city. We packed the place. As a matter of fact, I'm glad the fire marshal wasn't there
164. because we exceeded the capacity of the venue.
165. And we got a lot of great ideas.
166. We got a lot of support.
167. We have another town hall in Amman Valley,
168. the old Steel Valley,
169. on Wednesday of next week to get more ideas.
170. We just, I don't even think the ink is dry
171. on our business plan.
172. We just had a business,
173. in order to borrow money to get something started,
174. you got to have a business plan
175. and a path to sustainability, a budget.
176. We just finished all of that stuff.
177. Our goal now,
178. we were going to try to launch in a couple of months,
179. but because of the actions of the Venetulis Institute, how they treated the workers,
180. we thought we should seize this moment and get this thing published sooner. So we're going to
181. try to have something publishable, a website, and have stories published sometime in either
182. middle or late June and do a hard launch on Labor Day. That was Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
183. labor journalist Steve Mellon speaking to Pacifica's Steve Zeltser about the fight for
184. a new paper in Pittsburgh.
185. Then you know we have to unite
186. Cause there's never been a solution called divide and fight
187. We gotta all realize collectively this world could be ours
188. If all across humanity we stood in power
189. And if we all sing together
190. We become unstoppable and we can do the impossible
191. And if we all sing together
192. We become unstoppable
193. And we can do the impossible
194. One moment we can all be scared
195. Afraid to go under the bus
196. Then suddenly look everywhere
197. And there are so many of us
198. And the difference between standing tall
199. And turning and running away
200. is when you call
201. That was Dave Rovix,
202. performed by A.I. Suno,
203. If We All Sing Together.
204. You're listening to Pacifica's Capitalism,
205. Race, and Democracy.
206. I'm your host, Thomas O'Rourke.
207. Next, Marianne Pizzitola and Michelle Keller,
208. hosts of Labor and Healthcare Confidential
209. on Pacifica's WBAI in New York,
210. talk to two rank-and-file teamsters
211. about their fight for equal representation
212. in the contract battle that put them at odds with union leadership.
213. Today, we have the privilege to introduce some pretty amazing Teamster Union sisters with us.
214. Colleen Donovan, a prominent rank-and-file labor activist, four-year part-time worker at UPS,
215. a two-year shop steward from Oakland, California, a local 70 at the UPS airport.
216. She transferred to Teamsters Local 804 here in New York City, still with UPS as a package handler, and Teamsters Mobilize Steering Committee member.
217. She's accompanied today by Jess Lister, a nine-year part-timer, seven years shop steward for Local 728, Teamsters Mobilize Steering Committee member, LGBTQ plus caucus,
218. associate member of the Teamsters National Black Caucus, and Teamsters Mobilize.
219. Welcome, ladies. I am very happy to have you join us today.
220. We can start off with maybe just introducing Teamsters Mobilize a little bit and our kind of history.
221. So we started in 2022 and there's predominantly were part timers.
222. We had 1997 strike veterans and or part timers who maybe had a few years under their belt.
223. And they were all members of Teamsters for Democratic Union, which is a reform organization that was started in the 70s to fight for fair contracts and kind of rid out the mobsters that were running the Teamsters.
224. And at the 2022 convention, TDU members who became Teamster Mobilize members and founders thought, you know, we really need to have a part-timer caucus.
225. is there's a lot of issues that part-timers face that we continue to get underrated. We are pitted
226. against full-timers oftentimes, even though we know that we have a shared interest. And we wanted
227. to talk about that. We also have very low wages. There's high turnover. It's high discipline. We're
228. being set up to fail. You know, we're usually the ones who are working to load all the package cars.
229. And we get walked over all the time.
230. So we thought it was very reasonable and would make sense
231. that at Teamsters for a Democratic Union,
232. this organization that is supposed to be made up of Teamsters who feel like there issues in the union and then they want to get together to help push it forward The founders of Teamster Mobilize who were at that convention were told that it is
233. too divisive and that caucuses primarily are just meant for identity groups. So, you know, in Jess's
234. bio, it mentioned that she's part of the LGBTQ caucus and then also an associate member of the
235. Teamsters National Black Caucus. And they said sex and gender, that's one thing, but it doesn't make
236. sense to even have a part-timer caucus. It would just divide people up. So then following that,
237. those founding members of Teamsters Mobilize, who also were still involved with TDU,
238. started rallying together. It became sort of almost like a ragtag team. There were
239. open calls on Facebook. I joined around the 2023 contract fight because I saw that Teamsters
240. Mobilize had started a $25 an hour petition in the lead up to the 2023 contract campaign,
241. especially because Sean O'Brien was very public on the broader news saying like,
242. we're getting strike ready. This is his first contract with UPS as a president.
243. And he really tried to, there's a lot of bravado and show, but there was no clear demands of how
244. to get part-timers out of poverty wages. So Teamsters Mobilize really sort of forged the way
245. there. And then we started a whole like a vote no campaign. Jess, if you want to elaborate a bit on
246. that or fill in any of sort of the beginning details. Yeah. So one of the reasons that this
247. was so important to advocate for the part-timers, a lot of people don't realize this, but UPSers
248. are made up of about 60% part-timers. You know, you usually see out your communities, you see the
249. brown package cars, the drivers in the brown uniforms, you see the 18 wheelers going up and
250. down the interstate. But that's actually only about 40% of the employees. So there's about
251. 350,000 UPSers. So, you know, there's roughly 200,000 of us that are part-timers.
252. and since the 80s the union has thrown the part-timers under the bus before that time
253. part-timers and full-timers made the same wage of course part-timers part-timers had less hours
254. so they weren't bringing home the same check but they were getting the same wage per hour for the
255. work that they do um so that separation happened and when that separation happened um the full-time
256. wage went up the part-time wage actually went down and it stayed pretty stagnant for about 40
257. years i mean it went up like three dollars in like 40 years like like insane so this is
258. you literally had like two classes of workers doing the same job side by side next to each other
259. 100% 100% because there are there aren't many full-time inside workers but there are a handful
260. and yes you're doing the exact same work as somebody working beside you that is a full-time
261. worker and you're getting paid significantly less almost half about half as much so we knew
262. going into this fight we knew what we wanted to see but we knew what the chances were of what we
263. were gonna see from our union.
264. So we were prepared to fight that fight, even when the TA came out
265. that wasn't in our favor.
266. So we knew that was likely gonna be the result.
267. And so we kind of had our materials our slogans that sort of thing We kind of had these things at the ready And so we were fighting for 25 an hour um we were spreading the word 25 is the low or we vote no so we were kind of already convincing our fellow part
268. timers you're worth 25 an hour if that's not what we see in this ta we're voting it down
269. because um the full timers like you said there's this class system and the full timers very much
270. believe that the part-timers aren't even worth the wage they already get right if if you want
271. to make better money go full-time is the idea and that's that's where a lot of drivers came from
272. most people use the part-time position to work for a few years to hopefully move into the full-time
273. driving position because of course in a union everything is by seniority so when a bid sheet
274. goes up, you sign the bid sheet, it's awarded in seniority order. And so they kind of feel like,
275. well, that's how I did it. That's where I came from. I had to struggle to get here. You have to
276. do the same, even though there is no acknowledgement that not everybody wants to go and drive full
277. time. These full-time jobs, most of these drivers are subjected to 50 to 60 hours a week.
278. and they're not getting home until nine and 10 o'clock at night.
279. There is no work-life balance.
280. There is no family life.
281. If you have young children,
282. you don't even see them during the week.
283. Maybe briefly before you rush out the door in the morning.
284. But this job is a huge sacrifice,
285. whether you're part-time or you're full-time.
286. And so anyways, we knew what we were likely
287. to get out of the contract.
288. We had this campaign pressing for $25 an hour.
289. In the beginning of this campaign,
290. tdu actually printed it on some of their materials these palm cards that they sent out
291. and as soon as word got to sean o'brien that they had put this on their materials they were ordered
292. to remove it and it completely vanished if you don't have one of these palm cards in print you
293. would never know that it existed and so that was that was a huge red flag when we saw that we knew
294. right away sean o'brien is not fighting for 25 an hour and he wasn't fighting for part-timers
295. you have a convention coming up that you've been excluded from in which you wanted to participate
296. as a union member yes uh at labor notes i had gotten a ban essentially and a lot of that has
297. to do with the relationship that uh labor notes has to teensters for a democratic union which we
298. sort of talked about in our history, right?
299. Both Jess and I were members.
300. Jess also has gotten banned from TDU
301. and other Teamster-mobilized members.
302. How undemocratic.
303. Exactly.
304. And you can hear, like, listen to Jess as she's speaking
305. and the things we're talking about here.
306. This isn't crazy.
307. We're talking about getting out of impoverished wages.
308. And yeah, these Teamsters for a Democratic Union
309. and labor notes have decided to basically try and bar us out.
310. Are you going to go anyway?
311. Yes.
312. Good.
313. Michelle, they're going anyway.
314. And it's a longstanding thing, too, for labor notes.
315. Like, I'm not the only person that they have, you know,
316. tried to silence.
317. And it's not just about me.
318. It's about the working class more broadly and them being threatened
319. by people who will pose for us to fight for more than just, yeah, breaking bread with
320. our freaking enemy, as Jess is saying.
321. And Labor notes they are pretty conservative.
322. I mean they will produce you know blogs here and there on workers struggles but they said that the UPS contract was historic They said well 80 of the workers voted yes
323. So it must have been great.
324. We don't know what you guys are talking about.
325. And then it's a whole other story of if that 80% was actually accurate.
326. Like, you know, like, were the votes true?
327. Was it fudged?
328. That's why they don't want you in the mix.
329. You're talking about exactly why they don't want you in the mix.
330. That's why more of your history has to be talked amongst the membership, because might be one.
331. But the membership has already they already know they've been affected by it.
332. So where are you getting this information from? That's why I was saying good trouble.
333. Yeah. Yeah. And then and the irony is they call themselves Troublemaker Union.
334. Yes. Labor Note says Troublemaker Union. It's absolutely wild.
335. And it's, yeah, Michelle, it really says, though, what is their opinion of workers?
336. That we should just get concessionary contracts.
337. And that's about it.
338. And if we can't fight for more, that's all we can do.
339. And it's just insulting.
340. Every worker should be enraged and see that they're holding back all of us.
341. And they've siloed labor for Palestine, hasn't been allowed to have tables.
342. At the last Labor Notes convention we went to, there had to be a whole rally like outside of the entire convention because that wasn't allowed either.
343. So, yeah, they really just want people to keep their heads down and believe that this system is the best that's ever going to happen.
344. We can't fight for more. And you all should just like suck it up.
345. And we are. We're attending Labor Notes. That is the week of June 13th in Chicago.
346. The following day, June 14th, we are having a panel for a discussion and a criticism of Labor Notes.
347. Because like Colleen was saying, she's been banned from Labor Notes while Labor Notes puts on these workshops that are titled,
348. What to do when your union breaks.
349. That was Colleen Donovan of UPS Teamsters Local 804, New York,
350. and Jess Lister of Teamsters UPS Union Local 728, New York,
351. speaking to WBAI's Marianne Pizzitola and Michelle Keller.
352. And that concludes today's edition of Capitalism, Race, and Democracy.
353. We thank all of Pacifica's sister stations and affiliates
354. who contribute to the production of this show.
355. Today's program was produced by the Capitalism, Race, and Democracy Collective,
356. with contributions from Steve Zeltser and Garrison,
357. Polina Vassiliev, and myself, Thomas O'Rourke.
358. You can find this and all previous episodes at our website,
359. CapitalismRaceAndDemocracy.org.
360. Make sure you click the subscribe button.
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362. I've been your host, Thomas O'Rourke.
363. Thanks for listening.
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