Innamorato boosts base pay for hundreds of non-union Allegheny County workers, Councilman DeMarco criticizes plan

Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato announced Wednesday that hundreds of full-time county employees will receive immediate wage increases, the first step to raising their base pay to at least $22 an hour by 2027.

The increase, which affects a fraction of the county’s roughly 6,000 workers, will cover nonunionized employees, Innamorato said.

Abigail Gardner, an Innamorato spokeswoman, said the wage hike will impact about 600 full-time workers and a few dozen part-time workers.

Gardner said full-time employees seeing raises have been paid between $15 and $18 an hour.

Full-time employees will see their base pay increase to $18 an hour this year and then up to $22 an hour in three years.

Gardner said workers will see a $2-an-hour increase in 2025, then $1-an-hour for each subsequent year after through 2027. She said if the budget allows, they will try to increase the wage floor to $22 an hour at a faster rate.

Part-time county workers will see a $3-an-hour increase this year to a base pay of at least $15 an hour.

Seasonal part-time workers increase to about 500 employees in the summer, with the parks and county pools adding workers, she said.

Several union leaders attended the news conference in the Allegheny County Courthouse. Innamorato said her administration will work with the unions to increase wages for their members as well.

“We are going to work with our union brothers and sisters and our leaders at our unions in our next round of collective bargaining to ensure that all employees can take advantage of this wage increase,” she said on her first full day in office.

Darrin Kelly is president of the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, which he said represents likely thousands of workers across county government and county-affiliated authorities. He lauded the wage increase, and said it will help unionized workers negotiate for better wages by bringing up the wage floor.

Kelly said making public service work more attractive is a win for the county and for organized labor, by promoting longevity at the county and addressing employee turnover.

“It shows true value in the workforce, and that is what I am most happy about,” he said.

Innamorato said this year’s wage increases were included in the budget signed by her predecessor Rich Fitzgerald, and no additional revenue will need to be raised.

She said it was not clear how future raises will be funded.

The announcement comes on the heels of a battle between Allegheny County Council and Fitzgerald over county worker wages.

Last year, council passed a bill to increase all county worker wages to $20 an hour by 2026. That bill included part-time, full-time and unionized workers.

Fitzgerald vetoed the bill in June. At the time, he said his veto message shouldn’t be taken as disagreement with the need to pay county employees a living wage, noting his commitment to increase wages for full-time employees to $18 an hour.

After council overrode his veto, Fitzgerald challenged that bill in court on the grounds that the county’s Home Rule Charter does not give council the authority to set wages. A judge ruled in Fitzgerald’s favor in December.

Innamorato’s wage announcement satisfies council’s intentions while avoiding concerns held by Fitzgerald and others who were critical of council’s bill.

Fitzgerald had said council can’t usurp collective bargaining agreements in setting a wage floor; Innamorato sidestepped that problem by excluding unionized workers — the lion’s share of the county workforce — and vowing to work with them through collective bargaining.

Opposing council members also had questioned if part-time employees should be making $20 an hour. Innamorato’s policy doesn’t bump them to that wage level, but does increase their pay.

Innamorato said the wage increases are part of a broader effort to enhance worker recruitment efforts for county jobs. The county has more than 1,000 unfilled positions, and Innamorato said she wants to work to fill them as fast as she can. Most of the county’s unfilled positions are for health care workers at Kane Community Living Centers and the Allegheny County Jail, officials said.

The county also is increasing vacation time for its full-time workers, ending waiting periods for sick time and parental leave, and eliminating drug tests for many employees.

“When I found out that workers are only getting five annual vacation days in their first five years of employment, and that policy had been untouched since at least the ‘90s, when I was playing with Beanie Babies, I knew that had to change immediately,” she said.

Full-time county employees will now receive three weeks of vacation time upon hire and four weeks of vacation after working for five years for the county. After 10 years, employees will accrue an additional vacation day a year, up to a maximum of five weeks.

Innamorato said Allegheny County also will make sick time and parental leave available immediately for county employees, ending a waiting-period policy.

She did not provide specifics on how much these policies would cost but said there would be savings through increasing productivity and lower employee turnover.

“This is something the private sector understands and has implemented for years,” Innamorato said. “And county government needs to catch up.”

The county also is ending pre-employment drug tests for most workers, Innamorato said. The policy will still apply to unionized workers with contracts requiring drug tests and other employees required by law to take drug tests, like county police, she said.

DeMarco critical of plan

Allegheny County Councilman-at-Large Sam DeMarco said Innamorato “has miscalculated the implications of her plans to implement unbudgeted wage increases for Allegheny’s nonunion employees.

“While she insists that immediately bumping all full-time county workers to $18 an hour will not affect the 2024 budget, Ms. Innamorato was unable to answer basic questions about the future costs of her proposal,” DeMarco, a Republican, said in a statement.

“When asked by reporters about the budgetary implications of this action, Sara Innamorato was unable to provide an answer,” DeMarco said. “Telling people that she’ll check with her budget officials to determine the cost of this new policy is fiscally backwards. We need to know what something’s going to cost before we start spending.”

DeMarco said he was especially alarmed by Innamorato’s declaration that she intends the wage increases to provide a higher floor from which the county’s unions can bargain in their forthcoming contract talks.

“As fiscal steward of the county, the executive’s obligation is to the taxpayers. Sending a signal that she intends to increase costs without first assessing the budget implications could lead to massive tax increases as well as a business slowdown as job creators find themselves competing with government in terms of salaries,” DeMarco said.

“This proposal is bad for private-sector employees and could prove disastrous for homeowners as Allegheny County scrambles to cover the cost of this hasty decision,” DeMarco said.