Steeltown Standoff

"This is still a labor town!" That's the sort of headline that could well have run in Pittsburgh -- if only the city's two major dailies weren't shut down by a strike. To protest a plan to cut 450 of 605 Teamster positions, delivery-truck drivers walked out on May 17 against the Pittsburgh Press Co., which publishes the Pittsburgh Press (circ. 209,000 daily, 556,000 Sunday) and prints and distributes the separately owned Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (circ. 154,000 daily).

Last week the papers attempted to use replacement workers -- "scabs" in union vernacular -- to deliver editions printed in Canada. Although just 15% (about the national average) of the Pittsburgh work force is unionized, the company's use of fill-ins -- as well as an outside security force dressed in military-style uniforms and combat boots -- struck the wrong chord in a city that's marking the centennial of the 1892 Homestead Strike, in which 10 steelworkers were shot by Pinkerton security guards at Andrew Carnegie's factory just outside town. Readers burned papers, and advertisers displayed signs proclaiming that they were not doing business with the newspaper company. Even Mayor Sophie Masloff canceled her subscriptions. After two days of fighting on the picket lines, vandalizing of trucks and a march on Pittsburgh Press headquarters by 3,000 demonstrators, the company agreed to stop publishing the papers. The next day, both sides met with federal mediators.

Until unions and management work out an agreement, the city will have to get by without want ads, crossword puzzles, theater reviews and movie listings -- the latter two a disaster for local box offices. But lost business hasn't been enough to shift sympathy toward the company at a time when everyone in town seems to know someone who's out of a job.