Late on the night of March 11 outside of a distribution center on the South Side of Pittsburgh, a scab truck driver assaulted two striking workers. The strikers are members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and have been engaged in a work stoppage alongside four other unions at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since October of last year. The strike is a response to intransigence from the paper’s ultrawealthy owners, the Block family, on the matter of paying for workers’ rising health insurance premiums.

The roughly thirty striking Teamsters work for the Post-Gazette as drivers and in the paper’s circulation department. They, alongside three other unions that walked out in October — the NewsGuild joined the strike a few days later — were moved to do so in response to the Post-Gazette’s refusal to cover those costs. Workers now have not had a contract for nearly six years.

“Most of these workers have been with this company for more than three decades,” said Joe Barbano, a business representative for Teamsters Local 205, of which the assaulted strikers are members. “They work from midnight until 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. They go out in horrible weather and make sure the newspaper gets delivered. To have the company force a strike is a complete slap in the face.”