Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes inspiration from Andrew Carnegie
Steel mills, newspapers, and Carnegie Mellon Architecture: what do these all have in common? They are all built on a foundation of Pittsburgh-based exploitative labor practices. Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel mill in 1875, and with it started Pittsburgh’s cultural obsession with underpaying and overworking the labor force. With the foundation of Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1900, overworking spread from the steel mills to the classroom. Carnegie’s famous quote, “my heart is in the work,” has been taken quite literally, with Celsius-sponsored heart attacks now driving school production 126 years later.
Carnegie also had indirect influence – after embedding a toxic working culture deep into the roots of Pittsburgh (fun fact: the Pittsburgh water not only contains 5% lead, but also 25% my-heart-is-in-the-workium), the Post Gazette dutifully carried the torch of labor violations forward.
Andrew Carnegie preferred a violent approach to union busting. His manager, Henry Frick, hired Pinkertons to violently break strikes. This method, however, is quite old-fashioned (it was the 1800s, after all). The Post Gazette has taken a more modern approach to Carnegie’s legacy, and simply decided to shut down. This kind of union-busting innovation is what keeps Pittsburgh a forward-thinking and modern city.
While Readme doesn't have a union, we do have a contingency plan for this kind of emergency. In the event that the staff ever tries to unionize (why would they, it’s so fun to work here), we will immediately turn this fine magazine’s publishing over to The Tartan. We are extremely confident that working for The Tartan will be so demoralizing that our staff will understand that no union will ever be worth working there.
We live in scary and unprecedented times, where staff can choose to unionize on a whim. However, due to our predecessors' forward thinking and the fine engineering skills taught to us at our dear Carnegie Tech, we hope to continue to advance Pittsburgh's storied tradition of union busting.