Blocking Pittsburgh Growth: A Tyranny of the Minority

I didn’t grow up in a union household, but I’m steeped in union lore and stories. They’re part of America’s fabric and spirit.

In the movies, there’s Norma Rae where Sally Field plays a courageous union textile worker. Matewan portrays the dramatic 1920 coal miners’ battle in West Virginia. And one of the best movies ever made is Elia Kazan’s brutal masterpiece about longshoremen, On the Waterfront.

In literature, nothing tops the noble sentiment at the heart of unions better than John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath and the great speech at the end when Tom Joad assures his family: “I’ll be everywhere — wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” 

And in song, there’s the 1914 ballad “Joe Hill.” I sang it to my children, mimicking the great bass-baritone Paul Robeson:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” says he.”
“In Salt Lake City, Joe,” says I,
Him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”
“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize.”
From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize
it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill.”

WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES
My actual experience with unions began in July of ’85, when I arrived here as a 23-year-old intern at the Pittsburgh Press. One of the dozen interns tried briefly to organize an intern union. The company “dissuaded” him. My first front-page story that summer was about one of the last big steel strikes — Wheeling Pittsburgh. Four angry union guys sat behind a table in front of the locked gates to the mill, and they told the dozen newspaper and TV reporters to get lost or else. They weren’t going to talk to any management-dominated news media. “Get outta here!” the big guy reiterated. And they all left, but me. I was as big as the big dude, and I told him I was there to tell his side of the story, and that I’d do it. He was unconvinced, but an older guy with a cooler head called him off. They told me their story, and it ran the next day — under a five-column banner headline.

The Press was the biggest paper in town, a hard-driving, brawny afternoon daily with a million readers on Sunday. We won two Pulitzers in the late ‘80s, including the Gold Medal for Public Service — the top prize. The building at the head of the Boulevard of the Allies had 12 different unions, and in 1989, a drive formed to organize the only non-union group — the journalists. I didn’t think a union would help me. If anything, it would probably restrict my wages to the mean. But our managers were tough — too tough in my young mind — and I thought they deserved a union. I also thought a union would help a lot of my colleagues. So I signed the blue card, endorsing the effort.

That drive failed, however, and shortly afterward, so did the Pittsburgh Press. For decades, the Press had operated under the fear of a corrupt Teamsters boss, who controlled the paper’s truck drivers. Ultimately, the Justice Department kicked him out because of his association with organized crime. And by 1992, Scripps Howard, which owned the Press, was tired of footing the bill for numerous unnecessary jobs and took a hard line. The Teamsters struck and the Press hired replacement drivers to deliver the paper.

However, the unions surrounded the building so the trucks couldn’t get out. The police did their job briefly, clearing a path for the trucks. But then, Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff told the police to back off, stopping the paper’s ability to deliver and effectively killing the city’s biggest and most powerful newspaper. The incident sent an anti-business message about Pittsburgh across the country. The smaller Post-Gazette then bought the Press and closed it.

At the Post-Gazette, I saw the union from both sides, as a member and a manager. For reporters, it was laid back compared with the Press. You didn’t have to work as hard, and many didn’t. When I became Business Editor in 2000, I left the union, and my job was to lead a group of 20 journalists. You could look ahead and see what was coming for newspapers. So I instituted policies giving my whole staff a four-day week — a big perk — if they also agreed to measurably increase local stories (productivity), which they did. I was trying to create a template that would help the paper withstand the tidal wave of change that soon enough would wipe out newspapers nationwide. I was also purposely testing how much one could lead and innovate in that union shop — to see if it was worth staying. Even though my plan helped our staff, the union leadership filed grievance after grievance and killed the plan. It was clearly time for a change, and I left and started this magazine. 

ECONOMIC FACTS ABOUT PITTSBURGH
Thirty years ago, while at the Post-Gazette, I started PG Benchmarks, a regional indicators project (the nation’s third, behind Boston and Silicon Valley) to present reliable statistics showing whether Pittsburgh was moving ahead or backwards. For 28 years, I ran that project and a successor comparing Pittsburgh with 15 other regions in hundreds of demographic, economic and quality of life measures. At the start, we had great arts, low crime and virtually no traffic congestion — because we were nearly out of business economically, still devastated by the 1980s collapse. By 2009, we came out of the Great Recession stronger than other places — largely due to the Marcellus Shale boom — and it appeared we’d finally turned the corner.

In the past few years, though, it’s become clear that if we don’t change the reality here, we face further decline. We have the greatest natural population loss — more deaths than births — of all 387 U.S. metro areas — far greater than even Florida cities.

Worse yet, among 16 benchmark regions, the average 10-year job growth is 28.2 percent. Only one region actually lost jobs and workers during that 10-year period: Pittsburgh. 

More than any other place in the country, we need to attract new people — the kinds of pioneering souls who are going to see this place as the unfettered blank canvas where they can create enterprises and futures for themselves and thousands of others who will follow in their wake. We must be welcoming. We must remove obstacles, tripwires and red tape from their path. We must say, “Come — build your future here!” 

Unfortunately, the opposite is happening. And after 40 years here, it’s clear to me that our “union culture” and its antiquated us vs. them narrative is a big problem. 

A century ago, the powers that be lined up against unions. But the unions courageously stood up to “The Man” and fought for the underdog. Now, the opposite is true. The big unions ARE “The Man.” Pittsburgh is the underdog, and unfortunately, no one is fighting for Pittsburgh. Our political leaders are in the pocket of these unions — SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the USW are two prime examples — and together the unions and their political handmaidens are choking off our renewal prospects and driving our economy into the ground. 

How dare I suggest that? Let me cite three egregious recent examples. 

ADDA COFFEE, UPMC AND US STEEL
Several years ago, a Bangladesh native named Sukanta Nag opened four Pittsburgh coffee shops, which he called “Adda,” meaning in his native tongue, “to engage in friendly conversation.” The shops had been losing money and, in January of last year, he called a meeting, asking employees how they could work together to solve the problems. He said the only answer he received was that he should put in more money. Soon after, his employees decided to unionize, which was their right, and a day after that, he decided to close the four money-losing shops, which was his right.

Afterwards, however, Nag was vilified by local and state politicians. Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis — presumably representing Governor Josh Shapiro — called the closures “unconscionable and shameful.” And thanks to that dismal display of anti-leadership, Pittsburgh’s barista battles went national with a story in the Washington Post last February.

Workers are free to unionize, carry posters and use megaphones to let people know their views. But business owners here and elsewhere are also free to decide where to deploy their capital and energy. And if this area continues to be known locally and across the country as a place where you become a target for an angry mob if you close a failing business, word will continue to spread that there might be better places for your start-up. We need jobs in Pittsburgh, and we need real leadership. Someone should have tried to help that small business owner.

A second and continuing anti-business disaster involves Mayor Ed Gainey and UPMC. Gainey’s largest donor by far was SEIU Healthcare Pa, which donated $350,000 to his campaign and supplied the majority of his team, which now runs Pittsburgh. SEIU’s goal is to unionize UPMC, the region’s largest employer, and Gainey has pushed that agenda to the exclusion of other measures, which would have helped the city. 

In April, after Governor Shapiro brokered a deal in which UPMC agreed to donate $40 million to the city, Gainey walked away from it because it didn’t allow SEIU to organize UPMC. After that failure, Gainey’s administration trumped up a permitting problem that stopped construction for two weeks on UPMC’s $1.5 billion Presbyterian Hospital Tower, the city’s biggest construction project. The delay, which idled 150 union workers, is an obvious example of the city’s antipathy to business and why city development has largely stopped.

The third and most pernicious example surrounds the proposed sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel. For the past nine months, Pittsburgh’s “leaders” — civic and governmental — have been silent and submissive, either asleep at the switch or afraid to back the sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel, a deal which anyone with open eyes can see is far and away the best outcome for this region.
 
During last year’s election, national candidates opposed the deal, pandering to xenophobia with the false argument that keeping US Steel away from the Japanese is a matter of national security. That’s nonsense. Japan is one of our closest allies and lives under the wing of our military protection.

The deal’s main industrial opponent has been Cleveland Cliffs, the Cleveland steelmaker, which also wants to buy US Steel — at a bargain basement price — and move US Steel’s headquarters to Cleveland and close the Mon Valley plants. If that happens, we will lose 1,000 white-collar headquarters jobs and some 3,000 more blue-collar steelworker jobs. 

Cliffs was aided by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) and its Cleveland-based boss David McCall, who pulled out all the stops to twist political arms and block the deal. McCall clearly doesn’t care about Pittsburgh and the thousands of Mon Valley steelworkers who will lose their jobs. Nor does he care about all the Mon Valley communities which will be devastated. So far, the Cleveland-based campaign has worked. As much as former President Biden was supposed to be a big Pittsburgh friend, he turned his back on us and blocked the deal. President Trump is now reviewing it.

During all of this, where have Pittsburgh’s top leaders been? Not one that I’m aware of has taken a meaningful public stand to support the Nippon-US Steel deal and save 4,000 high-paying jobs here. The mayors in all the Mon Valley boroughs support the deal; so do the local steelworkers. So why aren’t Pittsburgh’s main political leaders — the mayor, the Allegheny County executive, the U.S. representatives and senators — and civic leaders demanding what’s clearly best for this region?

In my mind, it’s been an inexplicable outrage. But I’ve been told it boils down to two reasons.
 
The first is a kind of systemic corruption. In this one-party town, no Democrat is willing to go against the big unions that deliver the campaign dollars and votes that keep them in office. If that’s not corruption, what word would you prefer? 

The second is fear. Even in the face of losing 4,000 jobs, our civic leaders fear making waves with the unions and their henchmen politicians. 

THE FACTS ON UNION MEMBERSHIP
“Pittsburgh is a union town!” You hear that quote from every media outlet after every rally. But is it true? 

The most recent data estimate that 14.5 percent of Pittsburgh metro area workers are union members — that’s one in seven. In the private sector, just one in 10 workers are union members. In the public sector, however, unions absolutely dominate — 60 percent are estimated to be union members. 

Compare that with the entire U.S. where 9.9 percent of workers overall were in unions last year. A scant 6.7 percent of private sector workers were unionized, and 35.7 percent of public sector workers belonged to unions.

So is this a union town? Numerically, no. With only one out of seven workers being unionized and six out of seven being non-union, Pittsburgh is actually more of an un-union town. 

However, comparing us with the nation, you could argue that being 46 percent higher than the national percentage, we are a union town. 

Obviously, the most salient fact is that unions dominate our public sector, compared with the rest of the U.S. So not only are we an anomaly in terms of losing jobs and workforce, we’re an anomaly in having a public sector workforce controlled by unions.

Consequently, what unions want here, unions get, despite the consequences for the region’s future. Judge the rhetoric and the reality for yourself: 

Senator John Fetterman on the US Steel situation: “I’m always going to trust and follow the wisdom and the judgment of the union. My goal is their goal: to protect the union way of life and allow it to endure.”

Mayor Ed Gainey: “Pittsburgh is and will always be a union town, and I urge everyone to stand with the (USW).” 

County Executive Sara Innamorato during the Adda fiasco: “Pittsburgh is a union town! And we will not stand for it!” 

NEW NARRATIVE NEEDED 
When this country was deciding whether to ratify the Constitution, three patriots — Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay — wrote and circulated a series of 85 “Federalist Papers” to educate the public about the proposed document. In the most famous, Federalist 10, Madison outlined the dangers of factions, which he described as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” 

That’s what we have, but it’s not a majority faction. It’s worse — a minority faction. Unions are a small minority of our workforce, but they control our politicians, who either don’t understand our economic needs or don’t care. And beyond that, the union mantra cows other citizens and leaders across the region. 

If we weren’t so far behind other areas, it would be fine to keep kowtowing to this threadbare “Union Uber Alles” culture. But if we don’t turn around our business climate and hang a big sign on Pittsburgh saying, “Entrepreneurs and business leaders — we want to be your partners,” we’ll be a jobless backwater.

I’m not suggesting we become anti-union. We have some strong, cooperative unions here — the trades — which understand partnership and advocate for a strong business climate that creates jobs and opportunity. 

Unions are a big part of our history. It was here that people had the courage to band together, change reality and improve their lives. It’s time to create a new reality again. The old one is tired, counter-productive and doesn’t fit our new economy. The path we’ve been on has led us to where we are, and if we want a different result, we have to change. And if our leaders can’t realize that or don’t have the courage to change, we have to get new leaders. 

We need to create a new story — not of resentment, division and antipathy — but of a different kind of inclusion — inclusion in success, prosperity and the future. We need to move into the 21st century and again be a place of freedom, where we throw open our arms and say, “Come! Do things the way you want to do them. Thrive here.”